The space between
by Tribbles2
Summary: This story is about a pre-warp monarchy, the expedition they send into space, and the people they meet. I have invented some new aliens and characters for this story, as well as well-known and established ones. Non-slash. This story is COMPLETE:-
1. Chapter 1: The merchant

"Beam me up Qhur, we`re in a hurry!" Khark screamed through his communicator.

He was standing on the surface of Nibulus-4, also known as K`hmary by the natives. Like so many other M-class planets, it was filled with life and business opportunities. Khark loved it here, it was undoubtedly the favorite planet on his trading route. The indigenous population had just taken their first small steps into space, and this meant ridiculously high prizes for his merchandise. The K`hmynians knew that they would spend fortunes in time and energy trying to develop a technology of their own, so even though his prices where stiff, both parties prospered on their friendship.

"Will do" Qhur" his second in command answered.

The fifty kilometers that separated Khark from his spaceship were traveled in a matter of seconds. The view of the golden throne-room of his potential customer faded out, replaced by the light brown interior of his bridge. Khark was planning to sell such a devise to the K`hmynians at a later date, but right now they were still busy exploring the many practical applications of the tractor-beam devise he had sold them during his last stay.

"Where to captain?", Qhur wondered.

He looked up from his console, staring at the captain as he moved over to the command-chair at the center of the bridge.

"Nibulus-5, as fast as possible!" Khark said while dropping into the seat.

"Why are we going to….?" Qhur started, but Khark cut him off, screaming:

"I ask the questions here!"

Qhur could be so annoying sometimes. Kremm was much better - never an unnecessary word or sentence, no stupid questions, always straight to the point and eager to carry out the orders given to him. Khark was thinking about shifting their positions within the ship hierarchy, making Qhur the navigator and Kremm his second in command - but for the time being it was the other way around.

"Course set for Nibulus-5 captain" Kremm said.

"Excellent, put us into low orbit, and make it fast!"

Up at the bridge, the humming of the impulse-engine could hardly be heard, but in the rear of the ship it became both shaky and noisy during acceleration. The impulse-engines could take the ship up to full impulse if needed, meaning a speed very close to the speed of light. Getting up to full impulse was however very energy demanding, so Qhur usually shut off the engines at half impulse. At this point he would instead engage the warp-engine in order to increase cruising-speed. Thanks to these wonders, interstellar travel was both fast and easy. The warp-engine compressed the space in front of the ship together, allowing them to pass through more space at shorter time. It took almost a full K`hmynian hour for a beam of light emitted from Nibulus-4 to reach Nibulus-5, but in order to keep his promise Khark would have to make it there much, much faster.

"Disengaging impulse-drive and jumping to warp 3"

Kremm said as soon as they reached half impulse. Other species measured it differently, but within the Ferengi-language, warp 3 meant that the space in front of the craft was compressed three times, that the five kilometers of compressed space ahead of them would become fifteen as soon as they shut it off. At half impulse this became 1,5 real-impulse, or 50% faster than the speed of light. This was still not good enough for Khark though, so he didn't protest when Kremm increased to warp 6. The warp-engine was powerful enough to make warp 10, but this was not recommended inside solar systems. Unfortunately it was not only empty space that was compressed by the warp-engine, but also gravel, dust and gas. The navigational deflector-shield could take a lot of it, but in space as dirty as this it was barely holding. The heavy Nibulus sun had several dense rings of asteroids rotating around it, and now they where heading straight through one of them. The navigational deflector worked as a invisible plow of gravitons that pushed the mass encountered out and away from the ship hull.

"I could go faster but…"Kremm started to explain.

"Don't, this will do" Khark responded. He had kept a close eye at his panel up to now, so he already knew everything Kremm had to tell him.

"Arrival time in half an hour at present setting" Kremm informed.

"Good, that will give us fifteen minutes to find the lizard" Khark said.

They were going to Nibulus-5 to find an animal for one of the local rulers. When the southern kingdom of Nibulus-4 had managed to successfully set foot on the planet, the expedition had brought with them a pet for their king, and now the other kingdoms where wild with envy. This was where Khark came into the picture: The technological backwardness of the northern empire had made them desperate since his last visit, and the combination of despair and envy might make it possible for him to squeeze up the prize a bit further.

The product he wanted to sell was an ancient warp-engine he had found within a wrecked starship of unknown origin, drifting through space. His crew had tested it, getting a max speed of warp 2,8. Combined with K`hmynian rocket-technology, this could give their spaceships a max speed that was…. Well, ridiculously low as seen from the perspective of a Ferengi D`kara-class captain, but good enough for the northern kingdom who would get a fair chance of beating their southern rivals to Nibulus-6, a world of frozen water some hundred million kilometer outside Nibulus 5.

Khark leaned back in his chair, allowing himself to enjoy the view on the forward monitor. The relatively low speed of half impulse, warp 6 was not enough to make the stars move, but every now and then an asteroid flied past, dragging a long tail of white behind it. The K`hmynian home-world revolved around a star that circled the center of the milkyway much faster than the rest of the stars in the Alpha-quadrant. It was the humans who had gotten the odd idea of separating the milky-way into a cake of four pieces, even though they themselves had never explored the areas they called "Beta" "Delta" and "Gamma" quadrant. Khark found the idea pretty silly, mostly because it was odd to give names to places you had never visited - not even by satellite, but also because the map was fluid rather than static, each star moving at a different speed than its neighbor. The stars usually moved faster the closer they were to the black hole in the center, but Nibulus broke this rule by moving with the same speed as that of the core-suns and compressed gas-clouds that clustered at the very edge of the event horizon. It did so even though its position was far out in what the Ferengi referred to as "the safe zone", where things could have been stable and slow, if it wasn't for the many intelligent lifeforms that dwelled there.

According to Khark's computer Nibulus would use only twenty-five thousand years to bypass all the other stars in the Alpha-quadrant, and then it would continue half way through the Beta-quadrant before making its exit into the great black void between the galaxies. As a comparison, the Ferengi home-world used over a hundred million years to make a full circle, but at its present speed the Nibulus-system would do so in only a million, had it kept a proper orbit. The Beta-quadrant that it would pass into was mostly uncharted territory - at least to the Ferengi trade guilds. According to the calculations Khark had done on his navigational computer it would make its way through the Alpha-quadrant without coming into harm's way, but it was possible that it would crash into some big unknown star once out of Alpha. Wild-cat stars such as the Nibulus often ended their lives in violent collisions with other stars, but for this one it had turned out okay for quite some time, something the many life-forms thriving on its big rocky planets bore witness to.

"Zuik!" Khark suddenly screamed, looking in his direction.

"Yes sir?" Zuik answered.

Zuik was good at weapons, strong, fast, and he loved to boss people around. These qualities made him the natural choice for the position of away-team leader.

"Prepare the away-team"

"Yes sir!"

Nibulus 5 was swelling up, its rough, yellow texture taking more and more space on the forward monitor. Zuik immediately got up from his chair, aiming for the doors to the turbolift that would take him back into the main section of the ship. Here the rest of the team was waiting at the transporter-deck, weapons and tricorders ready. Zuik had almost reached the door when Khark remembered the correct succession of orders. Standard procedure was to first ask science officer Ghoob to scan the planet, and then proceed with Zuik and his away-team once the conditions of the planet had been properly mapped. Ghoob was a good looking young man: Big outstanding ears, deep, accentuated wrinkles running diagonally across his nose, sharp teeth, and a thick forehead that bulged outwards – just like Ferengi females liked it. Actually, Ghoob and his handsomeness had gotten him into trouble with some of the merchants on board. Within the Ferengi-tradition, all marriages where pre-arranged. The selection of partner was based partly on the financial and tactical needs of the husband's family, partly on the wishes of the male getting married. Ferengi-females had nothing to say in the matter, and this lead to a situation where a handsome and still single young man like Ghoob became attractive for sexually frustrated females stuck with older and often physically unattractive males.

"Ready!" Ghoob answered after just five seconds.

This new scanning-gear they had installed was simply amazing. It had originally belonged to an odd looking hairy creature they had bumped into while dropping by an outpost for supplies and fuel. Unfortunately for him, the poor fellow loved to gamble, and so his ship traded hands. Most of it was still at the storage bay, all but the scanning-gear that had turned out to be far better than their old stuff.

"On screen" Khark ordered.

It turned out to be pretty much as expected - considering its size, color and distance to the sun. Breathable atmosphere, 0,8 G, rather cold, and very dry. The away-team would need some thick clothing, but as long as the animal they looked for was not lurking around the polar caps they would do fine without space-suits.

"Bio scan" Khark requested.

"Not within range" Ghoob answered. The basic features of a planet could be figured out from a distance of several million kilometers away, but smaller and finer details such as for example the mapping of life-forms required the explorer to get close and personal. While waiting for the planet to get closer, Khark passed on the description he had been given by king Shyyrom:

"It is between ten and thirty-five centimeters long, four feet, long tail and covered in blue fur"

"Cold or warm-blooded?" Ghoob wondered.

"Don't know" Khark answered, a bit annoyed at himself for having forgotten to ask Shyyrom about this important detail. Warm-blooded creatures could be tracked at their heat-signatures, and where as such quite easy to find.

"Carbon or silicon-based?" Ghoob dug further.

"I don't think king Shyyrom know what silicon-based is"Khark snapped back at him.

Like most Ferengi he had a short temper, and he hated it when his crew asked unnecessary questions, or question to which he had no answer.

Five minutes later they had reached low orbit, and some mingling-spots for the blue-furred lizards had been found. It was most fortunate that they lived in packs. In Khark's experience it was much more difficult to catch a specimen of individualistic species.

"You know what to do!"Khark said to Zuik.

Had he been a human he might have added something like "good luck" or "see you soon", but such phrases of courtesy where unfamiliar to the Ferengi. Zuik rushed into the turbo-lift, eager to gather his team and fulfill his mission objectives.

The turbo-lift traveled through a network of vacuum-pipes that went across the many levels of the ship. Internal G-stabilizers built into its walls allowed it to take tight turns at speeds that would otherwise have killed or seriously wounded its passengers. Thanks to the turbo-lift the passengers and crew-members of the ship could travel to their desired destination within no more then half a minute, despite the massive nature of its design. Teleportation was faster off course, but very energy-demanding. On their many voyages, Khark and his crew had never encountered a species that preferred teleportation over lifts and trams as their main form of internal transportation.

The turbo-lift started to move through the shaft that separated the bridge from the main body of the ship. This was where most of its 230 inhabitants lived. It was a good mix of merchants and system operators, many of them bringing their wives and offspring along. Only the bridge-crew and the ship captain lived in the command section up front. Not so long ago, Zaik had been a merchant himself, but his business had gone bankrupt and Khark had saved him from humiliating ruin by offering him this job. Now he was saving up credits in order to get back in business. He had decided to try something new the next time, getting out of the overcrowded spice-market where he had tested his luck so far. He was uncertain about where to start, but Khark's many successful dealings in high-tech starship equipment and weapons was most inspiring. It was a market that was difficult to get into though, he would need a lot of start-capital, and it would work best if he had his own ship.

That was all in the future though; right now he had to focus on the job ahead. A short "Pling" signaled that the turbolift had stopped moving. The door opened, and he walked out into the transporter-room. His crew was standing there, all wrapped into thick, warm fur – just as he had ordered. Without a word, Zaik walked over to his own locker and took out his clothing and weapons belt. Standard away-team weaponry was the traditional energy-whip for close combat, and a pretty standard one-hand plasma-phaser for the rest. A tricorder could also come in handy. There were five of them standing at the shelf beside the transporter pad - one for each member of the away-team. Zaik grabbed the last one and walked up to the others on the pad.

"Energize!" he ordered the operator by the door.

With the push of a button, the away-team faded out of the room while simultaneously materializing out of thin air down on the surface. While in transfer, Zaik came to think about containment for the animal they were going to catch. Even though the atmospheric pressure was pretty much the same as inside their spaceship and its target destination on Nibulus 4, it was never a bad idea to keep live cargo sealed together with some of the atmosphere they were used to breathe in. Then he started thinking about how odd it was that he remained able to think at all while being pulled apart and put together again at another location. He knew from experience that such thoughts only made his head hurt, so he decided to stop pondering on it, instead asking the science-officer when back at the ship.

"Did anyone bring a containment jar?"

He asked the second they were fully materialized and free to move and speak again.

"Right here" Kraak answered while shaking the box he held in his right hand.

It had the shape and size of a tool-box, but it was transparent and empty for the time being. The big, open landscape and the fresh air under the cloudless sky made him Zaik instantly happy. Giant yellow boulders with sharp edges laid scattered around banks of smaller rocks and sand. The sky above them was completely blue, and the ice-cold wind howled as it pushed its way through the maze of boulders ahead, sometimes picking handfuls of sand and dust with it before it fell to the ground again after a few seconds of flight. The clothing protected them well, everything except their exposed faces. When the gusts of wind hit it felt like being sprayed with ice-needles that made the skin feel numb and weird, specially around the ears. These where rough lands, no doubt about that.

"Good! Phasers on stun, and eyes open!" Zaik said.

Unaware of the technical limitations of plasma-phasers, Zaik took his out of the holster and opened the hatch to the mini-console hidden within its handle.

"Plasma can't stun" Kraak protested, but his voice was drowned by a powerful gust of wind that almost pushed them out of balance.

"It can only explode or penetrate" Hyxx added as he struggled to keep himself standing.

Thinking about it, it was rather logical that scorching hot plasma-beams had its limitations, but what about the energy whips? Zaik untied his whip from the belt and opened hatch to its handle-console. He fumbled around within the touch-sensitive menu for a few seconds before ending up with a positive result. The energy whips had three different levels of stun, one for small, one for medium sized and a third for large creatures. Upon his discovery he helped the rest of his team find the right setting, and then it was time to head into the valley below them. According to the bio-scan, this was a mingling-spot for the blue-furred lizards.

The wind gradually faded out as they moved deeper into the valley. It seemed to pass over their heads, making it a calm little refuge for lizards and Ferengi alike. Zaik and his away-team had arrived mid-summer, and at this time of year the lizards where all out in the sun, trying to get as much light as possible before the extreme winter-winds made it impossible to stay up at the surface. In other words this was the best time of year to catch them. The combination of poisonous blood and a vegetarian diet made it unnecessary for them to hide, so both males and females tried to impress each other with the thickest and bluest fur. This made them pretty easy to catch, it didn't take long before Zaik had caught a big and healthy looking specimen to put in the box. The poor thing had been completely stunned by the electric charge of the whip, its body frozen, tongue out and all four feet in the air. Kraak did a tricorder-scan to make sure that its heart and lungs remained active.

His away-team split up at the transporter-room, each returning to whatever activities they had engaged in before being summoned for duty. Zaik was heading back to the bridge with the lizard in the box. Its big but empty black eyes looked up at him through the transparent walls of its cage. Their eyes met for a moment while waiting for the turbo-lift door to open. Khark was pleased with the result, the box and the lizard rested on his lap through the whole journey back to Nibulus 4.

* * *

><p>"Wow…."<p>

King Shyyrom the third of the northern kingdom was mighty impressed. His eyes rested on the exotic creature that stared at him through the glass container it had arrived in. It was a Hex-lizard, a small hairy creature not native to this world. The alien merchant had traveled through the big void beyond the planet to get it, all the way to Ke`hem`eshet. Named after a legendary hero from the old scriptures, the Ke`hem`eshet was a cold and barren planet where the K`hmary had only recently set foot. In fact it was the second planet where their species had landed, the first one being the equally barren, but much hotter Hemash, named after Ke`hem`eshet's little sister. Neither the Hemash or the Ke`hem`eshet landings had been the doings of the northern kingdom, whose only tribute to the field of space exploration had been a few puny robots who had gone to these places before the neighboring kingdoms had arrived in person. The situation caused Shyyrom considerable stress. His kingdom was falling behind and the alien merchant before him was undoubtedly aware of this. The highest bidder was always the most desperate, and right now this was king Shyyrom of the northern kingdom.

"And there are many more where that came from"

The Ferengi trader said in triumph. He had done what king Shyyrom thought was impossible, getting to Ke`hem`eshet and back within the hour, taking with him a Hex-lizard as proof. Hell! How was that even possible? Ke`hem`eshet was at least two hundred millions kilometers away, - even the southerners with their new and fancy ion-mass accelerators used many months on such a journey.

"This is not going to be cheap, is it?"

King Shyyrom looked up from the Hex-lizard in the jar. Its big black eyes had kept him under tight scrutiny during the last couple of minutes, but now they were replaced by the smaller, but much more expressive eyes of the Ferengi trader. The alien grinned in anticipation, knowing that a good deal was about to be made. Sensing his tension king Shyyrom smiled back, but it was a gentle, wry smile - perhaps mixed with a feeling of subtle apathy. The relationship between the Ferengi and the K`hmary where filled with golden opportunities for both parties, but all the K`hmary kings and nobles where smart enough to know that what the Ferengi sold them was outdated technology and second hand equipment.

"Oh, you know. A few tons of that, a few tons of this, friendly prizes"

Khark's grin was getting bigger, a line of sharp irregular teeth where revealed behind the light brown lips.

"Tell me what you need, I tell you what we have in stock, we make something out"

King Shyyrom said. His left arm reached out for the golden scepter that stood leaned up against the large and richly ornamented throne chair. The king had gotten chubby since their last meeting. Khark had noticed the change in shape the second visual contact had been established between the royal quarter and his ship, for it was quite drastic indeed. On his many travels he had learned that the various cultures, planets and races scattered around the Alpha-quadrant differed in their view on obesity. He didn't know if the K`hmary belonged to the positive or negative camp, so for the time being he figured it was best to keep his mouth shut on this subject.

"Need any help sir?"

He asked. The king struggled to drag himself out of the chair, even with the scepter to help support his weight.

"No thanks Khark"

The king moaned, already exhausted by the effort. Instead a young servant rushed out from wherever he had been hiding during their conversation. He eeled in under the right arm of the king and gave him a gentle push, just enough to get him up on his feet. King Shyyrom was not only obese, but also quite tall compared to the average K`hmynian, and in combination with his fine and expensive clothing, this made him a very impressive figure in the eyes of his subjects. In fact he was the only man Khark admired at on this planet.

Khark and Shyyrom left the golden throne-room, walking out to the big terrace from where the king overlooked his throne-city. The northern kingdom was not as culturally sophisticated as their competitors in the west and south, something that was reflected in the functionalist, almost brutal simplicity of their architecture. Up here in the north they had not yet understood that it was possible to use other building-materials then the concrete-like substance they dug out of the cuwubian mega-mushroom that dominated the planet. Its spores gave the atmosphere its characteristic sweet scent, and up here in the north the buildings where all made from it. Yellow, large, blocks as long as the eyes could see. All K`hmynian buildings - across all three kingdoms - where large and densely populated. Their interior design mirrored the social nature of their culture and lifestyle. The common housing-blocks held between two and ten thousand workers, while the equally big palaces held no more than a few hundred nobles. There where temples as well, but those where usually placed far away from the cities, and Khark had not yet visited one during his trips to the surface.

King Shyyrom pointed at various spots below, explaining some sort of plan he had made to improve the city. It was something about a new metro or tram he was planning to build, a attempt at loosening up the dense traffic a bit. The northern throne-city was poor and overcrowded, but Khark was absolutely certain that their king could give him a good prize for the warp engine he wanted to sell them.


	2. Chapter 2: Preparations

One day later, Khark found himself lying on his back inside the cockpit of a Lightning personnel-rocket. He would have preferred teleportation rather than the primitive, noisy, shaky and unsafe crafts used by the K`hmynians. The problem was that it would be rude to reject their invitation, and rudeness was bad for business. In the end Khark had decided to sacrifice safety on the altar of profit, but it had been a though call to make. One out of a hundred of those infernal rockets exploded upon launch, so it was not at all strange that his hearth pumped a bit faster than normal. The only positive aspect of his current situation, was that the bed he was strapped onto was very soft and comfortable. The K`hmynians had not yet invented G-stabilizers, so Khark knew that he was in for quite a squeeze during acceleration. He took a deep breath before giving the thumbs-up signal to the camera above him.

A nasal voice started the countdown while Khark prayed to the spirits of the continuum for good fortune. According to Ferengi religion, the most able business-people went there, but it was much debated if they had any way of affecting the world of the living. Khark didn't pay much attention to such debates, but a prayer or two had never harmed anyone, so he recited the only one he knew a couple of times before the countdown reached zero.

"three, two, one…. Ignition!"

Braaaaaoooom! The engines roared, sending powerful vibrations through the hull. Khark was afraid, but he tried to keep a calm look on his face, knowing that the K`hmynians in the control-tower were watching. The rocket accelerated, making his body increasingly heavy as it forced its way through the atmosphere. Until very recently, the K`hmynians had all used multiple-stage rockets that dropped its fuel-tanks when emptied. It didn't take long before acceleration decreased again, making Khark regain his normal weight for a few seconds. Then he became even lighter and lighter until the only thing keeping him in place was the safety-belts going over his legs, belly and chest. Khark's pulse slowed down to its normal pace while he untied himself. A gentle push against the bed sent him drifting through the small room, towards the air-lock entrance at its left side.

It took a couple of long minutes for the rocket to dock with the spaceship. When the two crafts finally merged, the red light above the door turned green. King Shyyrom's eldest son Yumaar greeted him at the other side. Like so many other K`hmary nobles, Yumaar was childish - full of life and energy. These people did whatever pleased them and nothing else, their rich and fulfilling lives made them both happy and careless. Most of the nobles managed to gradually focus their energy on a single hobby, getting better on it as they grew older. For Yumaar this hobby was space, and as the son of the king, he had a space-ship of his own. In fact this was the only proper space-ship the northern kingdom had ever built, a brand new vessel containing state-of-the-art K`hmary technology. During Khark's last visit this technology had still not involved gravity-plating, so their spacecrafts where pretty messy. Plates, tubes, trash and people tended to float around all over the place. Khark found himself floating in the middle of a broad but short corridor that ended in solid looking firewalls at both sides. He rotated around himself to get the overview of the room.

"Boo!" A voice suddenly screamed, startling Khark so that his arms and legs made a involuntary jerk. Had he been standing on the ground he would probably have jumped high into the air. It came from somewhere right over Khark's head, so he tilted it up towards the sound. It turned out that Yumaar had floated above him since he entered the corridor, using the lack of gravity to play hide-and-seek.

"I have some pretty cool shit to show you"He said with a broad smile on his lips.

The K`hmary nobility had the weird habit of adding strange, unclear words like "shit" "cool" and "stuff" to their language. The Ferengi on the other hand, always formed their sentences as precise and clear as possible, expecting others to do so as well. The kings and queens where not so bad, but during his first meetings with the nobility Khark had thought that his universal translator was malfunctioning.

"This will be interesting..." Khark answered sceptically.

"Follow me!" Yumaar said before kicking himself towards the door at the right end.

Yumaar's spaceship was named after himself, and it consisted of six modules attached together, not counting the engine and the command section at either end. Khark had docked to the hallway running between module two and three, so when he turned around to leap after Yumaar he had the fuel-tank and the power-plant behind him, shuttle-bay, storage-room, servants-quarter and dining hall ahead. The corridors of the ship had a rather minimalistic, almost pietistic design. The walls where white and naked, the furniture was made out of thin light-weight materials. The K`hmynians had still not invented hull-weight reduction technology, so everything they dragged with them into space had to be accelerated and decelerated in its full weight. Such technology was probably centuries away for the K`hmynians - unless Khark or some other intergalactic merchant decided to sell it to them.

K`hmary nobles where all snobs. It was unthinkable for them to enter space without bringing their servants along. At home they had several each, but in space things like cost-efficiency and weight-limitation became so important that it was impossible to neglect it completely in the name of tradition. The first tests-flights into high orbit almost a century earlier had been manned and built by the more rational commercial classes rather than the nobility and monarchs. Since the space surrounding their planet was big and empty, the private enterprises soon lost faith in the space-age, instead focusing on innovation and new markets opening up at the surface. A long period of inactivity had followed before certain new innovations sparked the interest of the adventure-hungry nobility.

The servant's quarter contained three big rooms, sleeping hall, kitchen and laundry. Yumaar and Khark floated through the narrow corridor that cut through the module at its center, not dropping by any of these rooms on their way to the dining-hall behind the next firewall. The dining hall was less minimalistic than the modules passed so far, the walls where decorated with fine oil-paintings of cities and landscapes from around the northern kingdom, and the deep, comfy looking chairs where outfitted with soft cushions wrapped into brilliantly red covers of a silk-like material. The table in the middle of the room was made out of dark wood - probably of a rare and expensive type. The floor was covered by a soft ocean-blue plush-carpet, and there was even an expensive-looking chandelier hanging from the ceiling. As they floated through, it became clear to Khark that they now had entered the nobility-section of the ship. Coming from a very hierarchical culture himself, he saw nothing wrong with this separation, but had he been a human born and raised within the federation of planets he would probably have looked upon it as a primitive - something not fit for a civilization at this stage in their technological development.

"Nice, hey?" Yumaar said as their free-floating bodies bumped into another firewall.

K`hmynians had this strange habit of straightening and stretching their antennas when proud or happy about something. Yumaar was definitely proud now, his antennas where straight as arrows, stretched to twice their normal length.

"Quite nice indeed" Khark replied.

The replay was as honest as it was polite. Yumaar's dining-hall had in fact inspired him to start thinking about renovating the meeting hall back at his own ship. This was where he met the most important customers, so it should be as posh as possible. A chandelier and big wooden table similar to the one in Yumaar's dining-hall might make his guests feel more welcome, softening them up for business-negotiations.

"Thanks, now we enter the front section"

Yumaar informed. He was happy with Khark's positive response, and therefore eager to show him more of the ship. The K`hmynians had bright yellow teeth that contrasted the blue color of their skin. They lacked the carnivore sharpness of Ferengi teeth, perhaps closer in comparison to the flat and boxy-looking teeth of the humans. While Khark studied Yumaar's teeth, Yumaar put his hand on the illuminated glass plate beside the door. It recognized his fingerprints almost immediately, opening up with a soft "swoosh".

Yumaar entered first, Khark following closely behind. The front section was different from the cylinder-shaped modules that separated it from the engine at the other end. It was six stories tall, not counting the computer-core and recycling-systems that occupied the floor between the meeting room and the bridge. Each bridge-officer had a big suite, and there was also a recreational hall with a gym and some board-games. There was even a movie-hall where the crew could indulge into their big library of movies at a screen that covered a entire wall, full surround included. Yumaar showed Khark through each floor before floating through the narrow metal-pipe that went through the computer-core. The pipe had a ladder built into it, but without gravity there was no need.

The Yumaar explorer had four consoles: Navigation, engines, life-support, weapons, radar & communications – and off course the captains-seat at the back. The other consoles and their seats curved around it like a horse-shoe, giving the captain a good overview when commanding his vessel. Yumaar explained all about it while leaping from seat to seat, pointing at the many screens and buttons as he went through the consoles and their functions. Khark did his best to follow Yumaar's rapid techno-babble, but a lot of it went over his head. This was not because it was in any way more advanced then Ferengi-technology - far from it - but because Yumaar had such detailed knowledge about things that Khark had never cared to study deeper than the basic knowledge he needed to make good decisions for his ship.

From what he did catch, he learned that the Yumaar explorer was a ship of a completely different standard then what he had seen them flying around with during his first visits to the planet fifty years earlier. He had been a young boy back then, traveling with his father along the same trade-route, with the same ship - such things went from father to son among the Ferengi. The large and heavy bio-engineered bacteria-tanks that the K`hmynians had used back then to recycle their air had now finally been replaced with a more efficient and less space-consuming system. Water-recycling had been improved as well, and the dorky-looking solar panels had been removed in favor of fusion-power and more energy-efficient machinery. Faster, cleaner, lighter. According to Yumaar, the Yumaar explorer and its crew could survive a year in space without new supplies - something that was rather impressive when having in mind that these where noblemen dragging their luxurious lifestyle with them into space. The problem was that with their present state of propulsion-technology, one year was only enough to take them very far. Nibulus 6 might be within reach, but nothing more.

"This is where you come into the picture" Yumaar said, not mentioning that they had done improvements also in this field since Khark's last visit.

"Absolutely. Five kilometers a second equals almost ten and a half with the warp-drive I'm selling you" Khark responded.

Yumaar didn't know why, but his instincts told him not to tell how they had utilized the hull-integrity-field that Khark had sold them two visits ago. When put to reinforce the pressure-chamber, it became so solid it could cook and squeeze helium 4 into metallic hydrogen plasma without bursting. Actual top speed of the Yumaar explorer was fifteen kilometer a second at half tank, and with the warp drive they would get forty-two new kilometers traveled for each second at full speed. If that wasn't impressive, then Yumaar didn't know what was. And there was more: A disloyal Ferengi merchant on his ship had revealed to them the secrets of gravity-plating. It was against the orders of Khark, who wanted to profit on it at a later date. Therefore the existence of gravity-plating beneath the floor could not be revealed with him aboard.

"It's pretty cool stuff"

Yumaar agreed. The Ferengi had no such word as "cool" in their vocabulary, so the universal translator skipped over it. All Khark could hear was "It's pretty…. Thing". The universal translator recorded the sounds made by other beings, analyzed it until it found the right language in its databank, and then it made a sentence of its own, carefully matching its tune of voice with the original speaker. As long as the universal translator remained plugged into Khark's right ear, Yumaar could not hear the translation of his own voice. The system caused some lag in their conversation, but it worked fine once you got used to it. Khark uttered a long and complex sentence, filled with deep, gurgling sounds. The translator spelled it out in perfect K`hmynian the moment his lips stopped moving:

"I have made a good payment-plan with your dad, so my people can install the warp-drive whenever you are ready, but you will have to turn off your electromagnetic anti-radiation field during installation."

Yumaar thought for a moment before replying:

"Great stuff, I'll throw in a bonus on top of whatever dad pays you if you manage to get full warp on the output of our fusion power plant."

During his conversation with the Ferengi who helped them out with the gravity-plating, Yumaar had learned that it took enormous amounts of energy to get a meaningful space-contraction out of any warp-system, much more than what the Yumaar explorer could deliver. Therefore they had been harder negotiators this time, getting a cheaper deal then what they usually settled for when trading with Khark. Yumaar didn't know how Khark was going to solve this problem, if he was planning to solve it at all. Yumaar was eager to get his space-adventure going, so he was willing to share some of his own wealth with Khark if he helped him all the way.

"Excellent! I'll set my people to work as soon as you're ready" Khark said, not asking for the precise size of this bonus. K`hmary nobles where never cheap on these kinds of things, always giving generous gifts and bonuses when in a good mood.

"Ready and waiting!"

Yumaar replied eagerly.

Khark took this as a cue to end the meeting, so he picked up his communicator and opened a channel to Qhur back home at his own ship.

"Take me home"

He said as soon as contact was established.

Khark faded out of the room, leaving Yumaar to himself. The prince was happy about getting such advanced Ferengi technology aboard, but he did not know that Khark had set up a devilish plot against him. As it where with most Ferengis, Khark's main goal in life was to gather wealth. Things like ethics and moral was hardly an issue, and this trait would soon put Yumaar and his crew in mortal danger. When back at the bridge, Khark ordered his engineering-crew to put a subspace-beacon at the warp-drive before installing it. The K`hmynians had still not developed subspace communication, and since they didn't know one part of the warp-drive from the other, there was no way they could detect it. With the beacon activated Khark could trace their exact position, and this could come in handy if the next step in his plan went as smoothly as he hoped for.

* * *

><p>"Contact king Yon-Kyr of the western kingdom!"<p>

Khark ordered on his way over to his command-seat. While waiting for his communication operator to establish contact, Khark enjoyed the view ahead. The main screen on the front wall was zoomed in on the nice little ship he was going to destroy. It was almost as long as his own, but in mass it was not more than a fly compared to an elephant. Seen from the perspective of Khark's bridge it looked like a long gray line with a metal ball in one end, and a square in the other. The square was the command section where the nobles dwelled, and the ball was the pressure-cooker where the helium was squeezed and transformed into heavy plasma. Yumaar had told him nothing about it, and neither had he told about the gravity-plating he had installed - but Khark knew anyway. His sensors enabled him to see straight through the hull, learning everything there was to know about those ships who where not properly shielded against it. Once destroyed, the engine, gravity-plates and everything else of value would be removed from the wreckage so that he could re-sell it to at another backward planet where such low-tech solutions where treasured. He had thought about selling it to the western or southern kingdom, but that would distort the balance of power, and such distortions could be bad for business. The three kingdoms had to be kept on their toes, in fierce competition against each other. Khark smiled broadly while leaning back in the comfortable command-chair, mighty pleased with his manipulative scheme. His big ears and sharp teeth made him look as a devilish cross-over between a monkey and a shark.

"Contact established sir!" His communication-officer yelled across the bridge.

Khark straightened up in his chair while restoring his neutral, yet serious business-look.

"On screen!" He ordered.

The visual style of the western kingdom was different from that of the northern, both in clothing, furniture and architecture. The westerners where minimalists who liked long single-colored tunics that went well with the feature-less rooms in which they dwelled. To compensate for this lack of ornaments, the westerners added lively and strong colors to everything. The king for example, wore a bright green tunic that matched his blue skin as well as it did the aggressive redness of his throne-room. Right now the furniture of choice was molded from aluminum in single peaces. Light, robust, expensive – just as they liked it. The king leaned forward in his aluminum chair, folding his hands over the aluminum table. His hair was kept in the same characteristic bowl-cut as he had had during their last meeting. The antennas who stuck up from his dense but well-groomed hair hanged loosely over his forehead, meaning that the king was in a relaxed and balanced mood.

"I have considered your proposal" King Yon-Kyr said, going straight to the point as usual.

"And?" Khark said, his voice and facial expression filled with anticipation.

"The deal is on"

The long, narrow face of the king remained emotionless and cold, but Khark could not help smiling. What started as a small upward pull of the dimples ended in the big and ugly shark-like grin that he usually tried his best to keep for himself and his closest henchmen.

"Your payments awaits you at the coordinates agreed on."

Yon-Kyr grabbed the remote-control at the left side of the table and pushed the button that cut him off. The screen went blank for a moment before re-connecting to the forward camera, still focused on the Yumaar explorer.

"Ghoob! Check coordinates!"

Science officer Ghoob digged up the correct numbers from the business-logg stored within his console. When done he transferred the numbers to the scanner-array, asking it to identify the metals and the quantum agreed on. The result was positive: fifty tons of aluminum, thirty tons of platinum and one hundred tons of stain-less steel, all ready and waiting for beam-up. There was more where it came from, but only if he delivered the so-called "wonder engine" that the northerners had cocked up, and Khark was uncertain about fulfilling that part of the deal. This was partly to maintain the balance-of-power, but also because he could not afford to look dishonorable in the eyes of the two other kingdoms. The destruction of the Yumaar explorer would be looked upon as a accident without any Ferengi involvement, but it the engine came back to K`hmary in one peace this would undoubtedly cause considerable suspicion .

"Ready for transfer"

Some unknown voice said over the com-link. Ghoob had passed on the coordinates to the transporter-room operator currently on guard-duty, and now this person informed them that he had a lock-on at the target given.

"Beam directly to cargo-bay!" Khark ordered.

Teleporting such massive quantities of mass drained a lot of energy from their power-plant, so much in fact that they not only had to direct all available energy to the transporter-room, but also had to drain some of their emergency energy-cells. Ghoob kept his increasingly grumpy boss informed about the situation as it unfolded, and when it was all done both men shared the same thought: That they should have replaced the antique energy-drain that was their transporter-room with a new and better model many years ago. By the time he entered the turbo-lift, Khark's head was already filled with plans and thoughts on the subject, wondering where he could get the best deals for the highest quality, what goods they might want in return, and so on. He was heading for the cargo-bay where he would inspect his new goods, smell and feel them, scan and analyze them.

Khark loved his cargo-bay, and he loved inspecting new possessions. Things from all over the Alpha-quadrant found their way to this place: Romulan ale in the fridge, second hand replicators at the back, some containers of plasma-grenades and phaser-rifles in the corner. Always looking ahead, Khark had kept a idle spot for K`hmynian metals and other raw materials at the center of the cargo-bay, right besides the warp-drive king Shyyrom had bought. When Khark emerged from the turbo-lift it was still there, but soon it would be replaced by a pile of industrial diamonds that he was planning to sell to a mining company at his next stop.

A company of workers had arrived to secure the metal-blocks, strapping them tightly to the floor so that they would not be pushed around during acceleration. One of the workers handed Khark a tricorder before bowing deeply and backing away. Khark made a short sweep over each block, checking their purity and density. It looked okay, so he strolled over to the warp-drive to say goodbye for now. It was basically a black box - nothing more. What made it perfect for the K`hmynians and other species at the same technological level was that it was pretty small and energy-efficient. They could run it on their weakish fusion-power technology, and it would fit easily on to the hull of their small crafts. It was not too heavy either, so their ion mass-drives, plasma-accelerators, and now this metallic hydrogen pressure-chamber would have little trouble pulling its weight. To bad he was going to kill the test-driver, but luckily he had several other potential buyers in mind when done.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile,Yumaar was on his way out of the air-lock, happily unaware of the cruel faith Khark had planned for him. The installation of the warp-drive was an excellent excuse for a space-walk, so he was floating alongside the exterior hull, heading towards the front section of the ship where he would meet Khark's engineer-crew. Both his legs had tanks of liquid nitrogen attached to them, and every time he curled his toes, the downward-pointing nozzles opened. It was a simple, cheap and efficient way to push yourself around over short distances within the vacuum of space. The Ferengi used something that looked like scooters without wheels, and one of them had a tractor-beam attached to its back. Its green rays spread out behind it, pulling the warp-drive and some containers along. The scooter made a sudden stop a few meters away from the thick front shield that was designed to protect the command-section from gravel and sand during high speeds. The warp drive would be installed in the pocket of empty space between the column that connected the shield to the rest of the ship, and the front wall of the command-section. It was fun to watch the Ferengi work, primarily because it went so incredibly fast, but it was also interesting to watch their high-tech equipment and tools in action. Attaching the warp drive to the hull seemed pretty easy and straight forward, but then came the more complex job of integrating it into the power-grid and computer-system of their ship. This would take longer time, and would mostly be done by K`hmynian rather than Ferengi expertise.<p>

When done with this first stage of the job, the Ferengi engineers and technicians turned their scooters around and headed back towards their odd-looking ship. It was comparable to the royal palace in size, but in style and shape it looked more like the ministerial department at the other side of the royal gardens. It's main section curved like a horseshoe around the pointy bridge that stood out as a flattened arrow from its center. The horseshoe ended in a pair of mean looking cannons at its ends. Together with the dense rows of windows that ran parallel with the stories at its inner curve, this sent out a mixed message. It was as if the ship had not yet decided if it wanted to be a tourist-cruiser or a warship. It was off course possible that the Ferengi had invented some kind of super-strong windows that where just as hard as its metal hull, something that would also explain why they had put them in the direction of acceleration. The placement of their engines where just as bold, for their impulse-engines where built into the hull of the horse-shoe where most of the merchants and their families lived. At the Yumaar explorer they had put it as far away as possible, with the huge fuel-tank working as a radiation-shield that separated the power-plant and engine-section at the back from everything else in front. Bottom line was that the Ferengi had reached a level of technological sophistication that allowed them to build their ships any way it suited them, and it was this marvelous achievement that Khark was passing on to the K`hmynians, one bit at a time, making a fortune in the process.

Yumaar pondered upon these mysteries while on his way back to the airlock. As he strolled through the shuttle-bay where their shuttle-craft stood parked, he had still not reached a satisfactory conclusion. This module was pretty big, cause the shuttle it carried within its walls needed big wings and a powerful engine in order to make it up and down through the thick atmosphere it was designed to penetrate. Yumaar could see a dim silhouette moving away from the craft at the other end of the dark room. He started running towards it, hearing the sound of his footsteps echo as it bounced of the metal walls. The silhouette turned around at the sound of the echo, raising its right hand towards Yumaar in what looked like a friendly gesture. The distance between them decreased by ten, and then twenty meters, but the silhouette remained featureless and unrecognizable. The industrial light-bulb that hung from the center of the ceiling was big, but it was not powerful enough to be the only source of light in such a big room. It was perhaps a bit late now, but had he discovered this problem earlier, Yumaar would definitively have ordered the construction-team to install a few extra sockets. His shadow grew longer and longer as he moved away from the light. By the time he got up to the stranger it was so long that it stretched all the way to the front-end of the room, continuing up the wall next to the fire-door. This was undoubtedly the most creepy place in the ship, but the broad and heartily smile of the stranger shone towards him like a lighthouse in the dark.

"You are?..." He said while stretching his arm out to greet him.

Yumaar grabbed and shook it.

"Prince Yumaar, captain over this vessel" He answered.

The stranger reacted by rapidly retracted his hand, going for the more correct deep bow instead. A few centuries back it had been obligatory for everyone but the nobles to kneel before members of the royal family, but that was before the corporate leaders had revolted, pulling the technocrats with them. These days only workers and peasants kneeled, and there where none of them out here in space.

"Computer-programmer Ulasiss at your service sir" The man answered nervously.

He was wearing the traditional red and white tunic of the technocrats, not the decorated, long-sleeved velvet shirts and breeches wore by the northern nobles.

"Aha, a technocrat in a house of lords. What are you up to?" Yumaar wondered.

"Your king sent me to calibrate the navigation program, so that it reports accurate course and position during warp" Ulaisiss informed.

"Sounds advanced" Yumaar said.

Even though he and his fellow nobles where eager astronauts, they knew little more than the basics of space-travel and space-physics. A helping hand from the technocrats and their teams was necessary to get them going. Those people took care of all the complex and boring stuff, such as for example programming. The only thing Yumaar and his friends would need to know in this field was how to re-install the software if it started malfunctioning, perhaps change a hard disk or two if it got damaged. Back at the ground they had built a exact copy of the Yumaar explorer, and here they had gone through such procedures a hundred times over – everything from a emergency shutdown of the power-plant and engine core, to washing plates and making your own food in case the servants died. And off course - computer installations and the replacement of defect hardware.

On their way up to the bridge, Yumaar and Ulaisiss meet a second technocrat. He was rolling out a long, thick cable that was to go from the warp-drive to the power plant in the back. A third technocrat had set up in the bridge itself, scattering his tools all over the place. When Yumaar and Ulaisiss got up there he was about to remove the panel to the engine-console, adding new wires as well as new programming so that the warp-drive could be controlled from the bridge. According to Khark, the system was pretty basic: More power in meant a gradual increase of space-contraction in front of the ship, until it reached a maximum of 2,8 warp, the magic number where what he called "the warp core" would explode if they tried to jam any more gigawatts into it.

Yumaar was looking forward to getting his ship moving. At the moment it was stone dead except the life-support systems and gravity-plates that kept his feet at the ground, but soon it would be filled with life and energy. It would be just like their best weeks in simulation-practice. Beeping consoles, humming engines, system failures, solar-storms and alien attacks. That last exercise had seemed pretty far-fetched to many, everyone except Yumaar to be exact - for it was he who had insisted on preparing them for such a event. "Not to worry" - Khark had told Yumaar when speaking about this exercise - "Space here might be thick with sand and dust, but there are no aliens but me" According to Khark the nearest planet with intelligent life was over a hundred light-years away, and: "Those folks are too busy killing each other to explore it". If true, this meant that the northern kingdom and its royal family had hundreds of empty planets and star-systems before their feet, places only waiting to be colonized and developed.

The future seemed brighter than in a long time, and the nice white color of their home-planet was a testimony of their progress. Seventy years earlier the thick clouds in their atmosphere had been yellow with smog, and today it had been even worse had the kingdoms not used all their wit, energy and willpower to change their ways. Yumaar was sitting in his captain's office, looking at it through his flat-screen monitor when somebody knocked on the door.

"Come in" he said.

The door opened, revealing an old friend at the other side.

"Tux, my man! Come in!" Yumaar screamed with enthusiasm.

In addition to being among the closest friends of the prince, Tux also held the position of navigator at his ship. Yumaar compelled him to sit down at the other end of his desk and share a cup of tea with him. Not much time had passed since their last meeting, so neither Tux nor Yumaar had much interesting news or gossip to share with each other. "How is your father?" Tux asked, a question that caused Yumaar to flare up, complaining about the uncontrolled weight gain that had occurred during the last year. Yumaar had not many people with which he could share such frustrations, so it was good to keep Tux around.

"The kings of our family have traditionally always exerted themselves to stay fit, being a good role-model for the people and all that, but now that my dad have gotten fat and lazy it might have a corruptive effect on the people as well!" Yumaar worried.

Tux didn't seem to have any opinions on the condition of the king, but he listened for a while before he insisted on shifting to another subject.

"I have been talking with ground control" He said.

"Ground control" was the name of a big office somewhere in the capital. The people working there where responsible for hammering out the broad lines of their flight-plan, so as the navigator on board it was natural that Tux maintained a close dialog with them.

"Any change of plans?" Yumaar wondered.

"We have been discussion it over and over again, and have come to the conclusion that we should drop by Umaria now that its orbit is favorable."

Umaria was the outermost planet in their solar system, even further away than their main target, a frozen world nicknamed "Snowball" due to its large masses of ice and its fast orbit around the only gas-giant in their system. Little was known about Umaria, but one could logically assume that it was pretty cold, thus it was named after the god of ice and snow in the old mythology.

"As long as we don't freeze to death I'm okay with a few extra months in space" Yumaar said.

Now that the warp-drive was theirs, the time spent reaching Snowball had been reduced from nine to three months, but that was with maximum fuel-consumption, using one half to get there, and the other half to get home. The ship had originally been built for a nine month journey, so there was absolutely room for alternative plans.

"I think we will be okay" Tux reassured him. "There will be two months extra, and we might even drop by Hemash on our way home."

"Hemash, isn't that in the other direction?"

Hemash: Planet number three. Hot, hotter then planet number four, K`hmary – their nicely temperated homeworld. Then came Ke`hem`eshet, the cold place where the southerners currently could be found plodding around in their thick boots and overalls, never the less freezing to death in large numbers during the winter storms. After Ke`hem`eshet came snowball, and after Snowball came Umaria. Jumping from Umaria too Hemash seemed unnatural to Yumaar.

"Look, I'll show you" Tux said.

A minute later Yumaar found himself sitting in a deep chair, in front of a star-map that covered the entire room. This was the lowest floor of the command section, a place originally designed for movies, but also good for information-display - specially now that the bridge was filled with technocrats. According to the red line on the map, their ship would go in a large curve that took them out to Umaria, and than they would fall inwards, passing the sun in a steep curve at a distance of only fifty million kilometers before climbing up to Hemash at the other side.

"Good plan" Yumaar said, and so it was decided.


	3. Chapter 3: Baby steps

It was not before late in the evening that the servants arrived. There where six of them, one for each noble at the bridge. Yumaar didn't know the others, only Kesh - his personal servant that he was bringing with him from the royal palace back home. "Wow! Space!" - Those two words had been her first response after he had explained to her the general plan for the trip, and that he wanted to take her with him. She had been at his side through all the other voyages he had been on, so why not now? This time it was going to be somewhat longer and probably more boring then in the past. Yumaar was certain that the excitement about being in space would die out after the first few weeks, and after that it would be more like a ship at sea.

"So nice to see you!" She said when they met outside the airlock, smiling her sweetest smile.

Yumaar had taken a break from the dull document on energy-conservation that ground control had sent him in order to go greet the newcomers instead.

"Good to see you too. Any news from the surface?"

"Your dad is all worked up over some insult from the southern ambassador, and Quinx just died." Kesh was calm and informative in her reply, but Yumaar knew that she had loved that animal just as much as he did.

"Oh, how sad" He answered.

Quinx was a hargji, a big and furry animal that originated from the great forest that separated the northern and the southern kingdom. A long time ago they had been widely used as work-animals at the big farms. Like so many other animals they had fallen out of fashion when the big machines arrived, and these days they where mostly kept as pets for those who could afford them. Yumaar went silent as the news sunk in. No more throw-and-fetch, no more loud barks or the feeling of his large coarse tongue running over his face.

"And how is the ship doing?" Kesh wondered.

"It stinks" Yumaar answered angrily.

The warp-drive would consume a lot of energy, but ground control refused to send them another hydrogen-tank for the power-plant - too little space, and too much extra weight they said. Now they where stuck with a dumb plan for energy-conservation instead. Yumaar hated it, and he used the time spent walking up to the servants quarter to express his grudge against ground control and their stupid, skimpy plans.

"So? We just ease a little on the warp, and save more power for personal consumption, no problem"

Kesh proposed.

"Not a bad idea" Yumaar agreed. "According to the new plan we will walk around in the dark most of the time, and we can't even take hot showers"

"Its your ship, and they can't remote-control it" She pointed out.

Yumaar liked the argument. Ground control could only advice, and Yumaar could break those advices whenever he felt like it. He should gather the rest of the nobles and make them work the numbers, see if it was possible to cough up an alternative plan. Kesh concurred wholeheartedly, and than they arrived by the door to the servants quarter.

"I'm going to gather the crew and see what we can do about the energy-problem, and than we will get going around twenty-seven. Can you fix us some snack around twenty-five? Bring it to the meeting room"

The K`hmynian clock had twenty-seven hours instead of twenty-four. In other words they were going to leave at midnight, or at least take it out for a test-drive. If everything worked as it should they would start the journey, if not there would be waiting, repairs and recalibrations.

"Will do boss!" Kesh answered.

Kesh was so sweet. Unfortunately she was way below Yumaar's class. His dad wanted him to marry some ugly witch from way out in the forest. He wanted to use him as a brick in some kind of odd power-play that could be fixed in a hundred other ways. Since both scenarios where completely far-fetched and unrealistic, Yumaar spent little time thinking about it. If he could manage to not make a mess of things until his dad died, than he would be king, and he would be so without having to drag a witch into the royal palace - high nobility or not. Perhaps this was one of the reasons for why he liked space so much. Not only did it give him a aura of adventure and bravery, but it was also very time consuming. Each year brought him a step closer to the throne, and space offered a safer path through time than the surface did.

The meeting-room had the only window on the ship. It was built into the back-wall so that it gave a good view over the modules that went out as a straight line from the second lowest level of the command-section. The anti-alien weapon that Yumaar had insisted on installing was mounted on top of the shuttle-bay module that stood up in front of the gigantic pressure-dome at the far back. The shuttle-bay module was broader than the other modules, in fact it was the only one with enough roof-space to hold the cannon. It was a combined rail-gun & missile-launcher that would accelerate the war-heads up to incredible speeds.

Just as he had finished admiring the weapon, he heard a gentle click behind him. It was the sound of the door-knob turning. Except from the thick firedoors that separated one module from each other, the Yumaar explorer didn't have automatic doors. Yumaar turned around to see who it was that entered. It was his life-support expert, a fellow named D`jumo that he met during his studies in astrophysics. D`jumo was very tall for a K`hmynian, about two heads taller than Yumaar. He walked up to Yumaar and greeting him with a formal handshake. D`jumo was a noble, so there was now need for a deep bow.

"Enjoying the view, are we?" He said, nodding against the window.

"Yeah, but it will get better when we get over at the other side." Yumaar answered.

"That is certainly worth waiting for" D`jumo said. He moved over to one of the chairs closest to the window and sat down in a smooth, casual move. Yumaar followed his example, and than they sat there together, looking out of the window in mutual silence.

At the moment they where passing through the night side of K`hmary, so the planet could only be seen as a dark circle that blocked the stars out. In a few hours or so it would get around to the day-side, and here they would see the clouds, lots and lots of white clouds that enveloped the surface like a thick blanket. Had it not been for the clouds, K`hmary would have been scorched by it's big, angry looking sun. At the surface one could only see it at rare occasions - getting a heavy sunburn in the process - but up here it was visible in its full, scary form. If one took a good look at it through binoculars with dark colored lenses one could see giant flames dancing on its surface, sometimes leaping far into space in a attempt to escape it's intense heat. Luckily the flames always dissolved and rained down again, so it was no danger of the sun shrinking. Right now it was hidden behind the planet, but not for long. As they passed into the day-zone it would move out of its hiding-place to bathe them in its intense yellow rays once more.

If the sensor at the outside was exposed to the full force of the sun it would dim down the windows in order to protect the viewers at the other side, but that would not be necessary in their current trajectory. The shield in front of the command-section would take all the heat, that way allowing them to view the planet without filters.

Other crew-members arrived as they sat there, and when they had moved into the night-side once more they where all gathered: D`jumo at life-support, Tux at navigation, Loup on engine, Saapi on communication, Cillion on weapons. Cillion had undoubtedly the simplest job, handling a console that would most probably never come into use. The most important people for Yumaar to talk with when elaborating on alternatives to the plans ground control had laid out for them was undoubtedly Tux and D`jumo. D`jumo knew everything about their stocks of food, water, energy and such, while Tux knew the ways of the engine and its Helium-supply. On the warp-drive they would just have to talk with each other, as it ran on electricity and therefore feed on the same hydrogen-tank as their life-support did.

* * *

><p>The meeting got complex and boring quite fast, filled with advanced arguments and calculations. While Yumaar, D`jumo and Tux got locked in a tiresome, yet constructive debate with each other, Khark was out on a more enjoyable errand at his own ship. After his inspection of the storage-bay he had decided to drop by the marketplace to see if he could find something nice for his favorite wife. Things where calm for a change, so he had decided to avoid the turbolift for a change. The storage-bay was positioned in the middle of the ship where it was shielded by the many tons of floor, ceilings and corridors that surrounded it. All paths of the ship ended here, not because it was in any way the most crowded or widely used spot on the ship, but rather because it represented it's main function. Khark and his "Sea of opportunity" - that was the name of the ship - was constructed for the sole purpose of bringing goods from one planet to the other, placing them where they where most needed.<p>

The market place was five minutes of walking away from the storage bay. First he walked down the narrow spiral stair that started beside the turbolift entrance, ending up in the rear center-corridor that extended into the machine room behind him, and a small plaza in front. At this place the turbolift tubes from the left and right apartment-wings met. These tubes where made from a transparent material, so one could see the lifts as they rushed through. The turbolift was perhaps more comparable to a metro than a lift, at least in a horizontally organized starship such as Khark's. The problem with the metro-comparison was that everything about the turbolift system was so much smaller. The lifts that rushed through the tubes had only room for about five Ferengi each, and the stations where not proper metro-stations, only doors with green buttons on their right side.

The center-corridor consisted of sidewalks which ran parallel with the turbolift tube on both sides. The tube could be passed by walking across the small bridges that where stretched over it at strategic places, usually beside the stations. A huge arched ceiling stretched across the lofty area, it was probably thirty meters up to the ceiling. The most expensive rooms and apartments on the ship where placed alongside the corridor. Further out in the flanks, prices dropped as the ceiling lowered and the corridors narrowed, making everything dark and claustrophobic. By the time one reached the entrance to the phaser-banks out on the wingtips, the ceiling was so low that one had to bend ones head to get in. These areas were not meant to be inhabited, but Sometimes Khark rented out space here to a poor homeless or lost soul for a handful of latinum strips a month.

As he got closer to the marketplace, the corridor got more lively. Ferengi of all age-groups and professions where running about, minding their various tasks on the ship. Khark's eyes were drawn towards two old couples who sat bent over a game of multiple-level chess. This game was difficult, very difficult. Therefore it required intense concentration from its participants, something that could be seen on the thoughtful expressions at the faces of the players. This was one of many games that the Ferengi had stolen from the Humans, a spacefaring species which it was difficult to relate to due to their lack of interest in trade and commerce. The Ferengi were never the less eager to learn their customs, so bold entrepreneurs had at various occasions sneaked in and copied the computer-cores of their ships and outposts, extracting among other things - chess. Multiple-level chess was a further development of the original simple-level chess, that had been a smash-hit among the Ferengi. The multi-level variety was the latest hit among Humans, and the company that sat on the Human computer cores had therefore released a multi-level board on the Ferengian market as well, hoping it could become just as popular. When testing it, Khark had found this game very frustrating. It was just too many choices with too many unclear consequences, and the rules lacked logical consistency. The way he saw it, the original was still the best.

Khark passed through the smaller plaza, heading towards the marketplace at the end. This was where the Ferengians bought the necessities of life from each other. On their various voyages, the Ferengians had discovered that most other spacefaring species tended to abandon the principles of free trade and market-principles as soon as they moved into space, instead drifting towards more collective forms of social organization. This was also to a certain extent true for the Ferengi - Khark for example, had forbidden anyone at the ship to trade with the K`hmynians without his knowledge - but such rules where kept at a minimum. The Ferengi always did their best to preserve the ideals of capitalism, also within the hulls of their ship. The system required each passenger to take with him a large supply of credits in the form of gold-pressed latinum before entering the ship. Gold-pressed latinum slips, strips and bars was the most widely used form of hard-cash in the Alpha-quadrant, popular because it was impossible to replicate. Khark had thousands of them stored in the safe at his captains suite, and that was only a fraction of what he kept at his bank at the Ferengi homeworld.

Actually, Khark had five gold-pressed latinum strips in his pocket - more than enough to get something nice for his wife. He walked into the market place and took a brief look at each stand as he passed them. The jewelry-stand had a lot of nice shiny things, most of them affordable for two or three strips. The problem was that his wife had so much of it already, so he had no choice but to think of something else. A nice scarf perhaps? Or a new skirt? Perhaps that one with the intriguing pattern? Khark scrolled through the inventory of the stand in front of him without being able to make a proper decision. A scarf would be a safe buy, as he didn't need to care about things like size and shape. Five minutes later he had exchanged one of his strips for a nice red scarf, long but thin - good for the sometimes chilly interior of the starship.

Having completed his errand at the market, Khark moved on. Behind the market, the hull and ceiling narrowed as it approached the wall that separated the command-section from the rest of the ship. The turbolift tube continued through a hole in the center, but there was also a small door at the left side. Khark strolled over the bridge that went over the tube and walked up to the door. For security-reasons, a code had to be entered before he could walk through. He punched in the correct combination of numbers at the panel, the door opened with a gentle click.

Khark was on his way up the stairway to his house when his communicator suddenly started ringing. It was a call he had expected, but he had hoped that he would get enough time to deliver the gift first. Well, nothing to be done about that now.

"Qhur here, Im calling to inform you that the Yumaar explorer is ready to test the warp drive"

"Okay, I will be right there"

This was a view that he should not miss, and besides he would have to talk to king Shyyrom afterward, no matter the outcome. He walked away from the door to his suit, heading down the stairs and through the fire-door to the bridge instead. The gray bag and the scarf it contained remained in his left hand as he stepped into the bridge area. Everyone in his team was sitting at their correct seats. Qhur, Kremm, Ghoob, Shykk, Bukk and Zaik, one for each of the consoles. Qhur - his second in command - was responsible for the acountance-screen at the inner left corner, Kremm had navigation, Ghoob science and scanning, Shykk at communication, Bukk at weapons, and Zaik at life-support when not leading the away-team. He had a reserve that monitored his screen when away, a rather ordinary looking fellow whose name Khark could not remember.

"Prince Yumaar is hailing us sir!" Shykk said. A short pulse of two beats was emitted from his console, repeating itself every three seconds until Khark decided if he wanted to accept or deny the call.

"Let him through" Khark said.

Prince Yumaar had gathered his crew at the bridge. For the first time in their relationship he was facing Khark as proper ship captain, surrounded by consoles, big screens and everything that went with it. The only thing that seemed to be missing was gravity. Yumaar and his crew were strapped to their seats with safety belts. An empty can was floating across the screen.

"Good morning captain" Khark said.

"Good morning captain" Yumaar repeated

Yumaar's captains-seat was coated in white leather, and it had a small panel built into the edge of its right armrest, just like Khark had. The position of his team seemed pretty similar as well, both bridges kept them in a horse-shoe arrangement around the captains-seat. The K`hmynian designers had obviously looked to the Ferengi for inspiration, but there where also some differences. Yumaar's bridge was mostly white, with some black lines that ran around the console-edges and panels. The Sea of Opportunity on the other hand, had light-brown as its primary color, not only at the bridge, but also at the interior walls of the whole ship.

"So are you ready for your virgin-voyage?" Khark wondered.

"My dad is eager to complete the transaction, but we need a short test-drive first. You are welcome to tag along if you wish" Yumaar said.

"It will be my pleasure. Whenever you are ready captain"

* * *

><p>Yumaar ordered Sappi to end the transmission with Khark so that he could give his full concentration to the ship and the task ahead.<p>

Once the forward view returned to normal he asked Loup how the engine was doing. Loup and Sappi were the only females at his crew, both charming in their different ways.

"Starting heat-up sequence" Loup answered.

During the next couple of minutes, the helium dropped into the pressure-chamber would be heated up to several hundred thousand Celsius, and then they would get the metallic hydrogen plasma that would push the craft forward when the vent opened. A lot of advanced and energy-draining technology was involved in the process. The most important one was the integrity field that gave the pressure-chamber extra strength during the final steps of the process. It was helped a bit by the pressurized pool of cooling-aid that circled around it, keeping its exterior temperature down. There where other systems involved as well, but these where the only two that Yumaar had managed to form a basic understanding of. To simplify a bit, the engine of the Yumaar explorer was the extreme version of what happens with a balloon filled with air if you let go of it.

"Engaging integrity-field" "Increasing pool-pressure" "Increasing power plant output"

Loup kept them informed of the engine-process. Yumaar had heard this sequence of words a couple of times before, so he knew all the steps of the ladder.

"Helium-hydrogen transaction" "Transaction complete" "Hydrogen metalizing" "Metallic hydrogen established"

"We have metallic hydrogen plasma" She than said in triumph, happy to see that the system was working as planned.

The only thing left to do now was to open the vent at the rear end, and send the odd product that they had created out and away. The exit-funnel for the plasma narrowed down to a microscopic hole of only a few millimeters in size before widening out again, but the tank would never the less manage to empty itself in only four hours. That would be four hours with a acceleration of two Gs, had it not been for the system of auto-adjusting gravity-plating they had installed in the walls.

"Sappi, inform the servants quarter that we are about to move" Yumaar ordered.

In fact they had been ordered to prepare for acceleration half an hour earlier, so hopefully they had secured all loose objects and strapped themselves to their beds, according to protocol. As long as the anti-G system worked according to plan, this was not be necessary except as a safety-measure during start-up.

"All ready down here" A voice unknown to Yumaar responded when Sappi used the internal com-link system to ask if they where ready.

"D`Jumo, secure loose object" Yumaar continued. The empty can that had been floating around in the bridge for the last couple of hours was now positioned right over D`jumo's head, well within reach of his arms. D`Jumo looked around in confusion for a few seconds before he saw it. He grabbed it with both hands and put it away in the small drawer that was built into the armrest of his seat.

"Okay then. We are ready for movement" Yumaar said smiling.

Safety belts on, no loose objects, pressure chamber at max capacity. It used a lot of energy to stay that way though, so there was no point in postponing the big moment.

"D`Jumo, report relative acceleration as we proceed"

"Yes sir" D`Jumo answered.

"Engage"

This was the cue for Loup to open the pressure chamber vent. As soon as she pressed the button, metallic hydrogen plasma squeezed its way through the funnel, eager to escape its narrow confinement and leap into the freedom of empty space at the other side. Upon release it shot out like a narrow beam of intense yellow light. The beam widened as it moved away from the craft at several kilometers a second, in the end dissolving and turning into a fast moving wind of clouds instead.

* * *

><p>Seen through the eyes of the Ferengi this was a terrible waste of good hydrogen. On their starships the electro-plasma was accelerated up to nearly the speed of light within the plasma coils before released. At the Yumaar explorer it was only compressed for storage, and then sprayed right out into space without further treatment. Pretty dumb indeed, but at least they had a proper warp-drive to get them going. The front camera followed the Yumaar explorer as it accelerated away from them. Right now they needed their entire energy-output in order to keep the pressure-chamber from bursting, so they would not be able to test the warp drive before it ran dry. The Yumaar explorer shrunk away until it blended in with the stars that surrounded it. The camera could zoom no further, so they would have to switch to the main telescope if they wished to follow its progress without tagging along.<p>

"So what happens now?" Bukk - Khark's weapons operator - wondered impatiently.

His skills with the phaser and torpedo banks where hardly ever needed, as Khark did his best to stay clear of armed conflicts. - It was "Bad for business" as his father had once told him, and probably his father before that again. This time the enemy was weak and defenseless, but Bukk could not be allowed pacify his blood-lust yet.

"Patience!" Khark ordered. "Not here where everybody can see us!"

Bukk snarled at him, a hissing sound that the Ferengi sometimes used when angry. His upper-lips curled upwards, exposing his fangs. This was too much for Khark, so he leaped against him at such speed that Bukk had no time to react. Khark grabbed his head and banged it as hard as he could against the sharp upper edge of his weapons-console before throwing him out of his chair. Khark did this whenever Bukk failed to control his temper - on almost daily basis in other words. Luckily all Ferengi had thick skulls and dense bone-structure, so they could take a lot of beating without permanent damage.

Khark whirled around and walked back to his command-chair with long, efficient steps. Bukk was still lying on the floor beside his console when Khark sat down and folded his hands over his chest in a demonstrative, angry manner. Bukk climbed slowly and uncertainly to his feet with Khark's laser-gaze fixed upon him. It was not before the communication panel started beeping that he switched focus.

"Incoming sub-space transmission" Shykk informed.

"On screen" Khark demanded.

A strange looking creature emerged at the flat screen in front of them. It was one of the "five-eyes", a species that only Khark and his Sea of Opportunity knew about. He had named them five-eyes because they had five eyes instead of two - which was much more common across the Alpha-quadrant. Five pitch black and expression-less lenses stood out of their big fur-covered heads. The three biggest formed a triangle above the thin, lip-less mouth-hole, the two remaining where smaller and sat on the left and right flank of the head. just like the K`hmynians they had a pair of antennas at the top of their heads, but these ones where longer, thicker and hairier.

"Click-click-clack" The creature said, three deep, hollow sounds that echoed through the big hall it was standing in.

Since they where incapable of making more than a handful of sounds, five-eyes spoke in something that closely resembled Morse-code. They always opened their dialogs with a greeting that consisted of two clicks and a clack in their slowest pace, but when they actually started speaking it went much, much faster.

"Click`eti-clack,click-clack,buzz,clack,hisssss,buzz,clack, buzz" The creature continued without making anybody among the audience any smarter. The seemingly pointless transmission ended, and the stars reappeared.

The Yumaar explorer was now completely gone. According to the radar screen at Kremm's console it had already moved hundred kilometers away from them, going at almost one kilometer a second and climbing steadily. Kremm reported the statistics unsolicited, as if he knew Khark was going to ask. By the time their pressure-chamber was out they would have climbed to seven and a half kilometers a second, having used one quarter of their helium supply. Thanks to his scanning-equipment Khark knew the engine system of the Yumaar explorer as well as the crew itself - perhaps better.

"Run the message through the universal translator"

Khark said when Kremm had finished speaking. With the push of a few buttons at Shykk's console, the message was sent to the computer-core where it was analyzed by a linguistic-analyser that had several thousand languages installed. Originally Five-eye speak had not been among them, so upon discovery Khark had sent his best linguists to live among them for a year, recording tapes and analyzing them together with a linguistic computer. The result was that the computer-core now knew how to speak five-eye, and this was good for business. Five-eye society centered around a few mighty queens, and these queens where in constant struggles with each other over the territories of their planet. The queen Khark was in contact with needed weapons, lots of weapons - and she had goods to offer that were of interest to him.

"Greetings lord Khark. Are you close? We need guns! When can you come? Are you close?"

The transmission ended.

In fact Khark didn't have that many guns right now. At his last trip to Kenubio 5 the whole storage-bay had been filled to the brink with them, but now he only had a few thousand. Queen Five-eye would be disappointed, no doubt about that. Still, some guns where better than no guns at all, specially when considering the primitive state of Five-eye's homemade weaponry.

Khark sunk into his chair, his head filled with complex thoughts and considerations. On one hand was the necessity of destroying the Yumaar explorer so that he could reclaim the gear he had sold them, and on the other hand he had the needs of queen five-eye and her children. A dilemma? Perhaps so. The Yummar explorer could not be destroyed as long as the deed could be spotted from the orbital telescopes set up by the northern kingdom, and it would take about a month before it went beyond reach of their gaze - even with the warp drive.

"How far to Kenubio 5?" He asked Kreem.

"From here? Hm, if I remember correctly its about two weeks at full warp. We went there after our last stop at this place"

"Perfect!" Khark thought. Four weeks tour-re-tour, and then... BANG! Yumaar would be dead, and he would get his stuff back, with valuable metals from king Yon-Kyr of the western kingdom, and high quality industrial diamonds from king Shyyrom of the northern kingdom in addition.

* * *

><p>Three and a half hour later, the Yumaar explorer had emptied its pressure-chamber. They rushed through space at a speed of seven and a half kilometers a second, but on the look of things they could just as easily be standing completely still. The front monitor transmitted the same stars, in the same positions as they had been in when they started. The only thing that had changed was the size of K`hmary, who had shrunk considerably since they started. Now that they had tested the engine, it was time for the second magic moment of their trip: The Warp-drive.<p>

"Okay people..." Prince Yumaar said. "Is everything green?"

"Green" was space-slang for "fine" or "good". Its was so because the information displayed at their consoles came in green color if things was the way they were supposed to be.

"Engine fuel-supply on 75 percent" Loup reported.

"Power-plant fuel supply on 95 percent, currently going through cool-down and re-adjustment to lower output" D`Jumo reported.

"Course, position and speed is according to plan" Tux reported.

Thanks to the extreme energy-efficiency of the pressure-chamber integrity-field and the massive heat that the helium itself produced while transforming itself into hydrogen, the engine drained no more than five percent of the power plant's hydrogen supply for each burst. The warp drive consumed even less per hour, but since they were going to keep it on around the clock it never the less became a huge energy-drain. A general estimate suggested that 98% of their energy-supply would be used to move the ship, leaving only 2% for for the life-support systems.

"How long before we are ready for warp? Yumaar asked.

"Power-plant recalibrated in approximately five minutes" D`Jumo said.

The power-plant was in fact controlled from Loup's console, but due to the complexity of the engine-system, the task of reporting and overseeing its operations had been passed on to D`jumo.

The five minutes passed, and then came warp. With the warp-drive on it's maximum output, their speed jumped 2,8 times, from 7,5 to 21 kilometers a second, but to Yumaar and his crew this was only numbers. The space in front of them remained still despite its compression, and the ship remained as calm as ever, despite the incredible numbers that ticked into Tux's navigational console. If one moved further back in the ship one would hear the humming of the power-plant, and if one climbed down to the bottom floor and leaned ones hand or antenna against the front wall, one would feel the vibrations of the warp-core at the other side. - None of this affected the bridge though. Silence fell upon it while Yumaar tried to remember his next task.

"Let's call dad" He finally said, but this was the wrong succession of actions.

"Chiminan wine and festivities first!" Cillion reminded him.

As the weapons-operator of the ship, Cillion had remained silent during the acceleration period. His weapons console was black and dead. In order to save energy both the console and the cannon it was attached to was to remain off-line until Yumaar hit the red-alert button. As with so many other aspects of the ship, this was inspired by Khark and his "Sea of Opportunity".For the last couple of days Yumaar had though hard on what kind of supplementary tasks he could give Cillion in order to compensate for the passive nature of his primary function. Unfortunately all the simple stuff was outsourced to the servants, so the situation was frustrating.

"Yeah, please do" Yumaar answered automatically when D`Jumo asked if he should turn normal gravity back on. They had kept it off during acceleration in order to give Khark the impression that they didn't have it. The Ferengi merchant who had sold it to them had instructed them to do so, afraid to get busted as he was. It was impossible to eat without it though, so they would just have to remember to turn it on again if Khark called.

"Yeah, please do" he repeated - still in a distant mood - when Saapi a second later asked if she should order some of the good stuff to be brought up to them.

Gravity returned, and soon after a glass of Chimian wine and a plate with four huge blue-shrimps was put at a table that had popped up beside him.

"Task for Cillion, task for Cillion" Yumaar repeated in his mind. Keeping the computer-core in order? Nah, that happened automatically. Perhaps he could read up damage-reports if the ship was hit by something? Nope, he had that task already, and if he ever got the chance to do so, Yumaar found it highly probable that it also would mean that their journey was about to suffer a tragic and violent end. Hmmm... Taking photos perhaps? Not a bad idea. Their voyage should be properly documented, and this could be done by Cillion.

Good food was apparently not good enough for Saapi, so she turned on some music as well. Soon the merry tunes of a traditional northern flute-band with drums poured out of the big speakers behind the command-chair. Yumaar listened for a few seconds before he called Cillion over to him in order to air the idea.

"If we have a camera aboard I'm all for it" He answered with enthusiasm.

* * *

><p>When Khark called them up half an hour later, gravity was off and the festivities had ended. All that remained was two empty bottles of champagne that floated around under the ceiling.<p>

"The warp-drive is working the way you said it would" Yumaar said, looking into the camera.

"Good! Do you mind calling your king and ask him to make the transfer?" Khark answered, eager to get his payment.

"Will do" Yumaar confirmed.

"And what about that extra bonus you promised me?" Khark said, reminding Yumaar about his earlier promise. "I'll throw in a bonus on top of whatever dad pays you if you manage to get full warp on whatever output our fusion-plant can give you" Yumaar had said some hours earlier. Like any good businessman, Khark had a very accurate memory on such things

"I'm eager to get going now, so you will get it when I return" Yumaar answered. Khark looked a bit disappointed, so Yumaar threw in a explanation in order to defend his decision.

"There is full warp, and than there is full warp over time. If this machine crashes I wont get home, and then you wont get your bonus"

Khark was not all that pleased, but there was nothing he could say to make Yumaar change his mind.

"Acceptable" he muttered with a frustrated look on his face.

The transmission ended, and soon after they where hailed by king Shyyrom. Everything was good, and the industrial diamonds were waiting for beam-up. It warmed Khark's heart to watch as they materialized where the outdated warp-drive had once been. He felt lazy at the moment, so he did not do as he usually did, taking the turbolift up to inspect them in person. Instead he made Shykk display the event as it looked through the lens of the closest security camera. They where all sharp and big, just like the miners at Vinius 3 wanted them. A worker approached the newcomer with a tricorder in his hand. When he got close he made a brief sweep, and than he observered as the screen of his tool filled itself with data. After some seconds of careful examination he switched it of and picked up his communicator instead. The communication console only had time to beep once before Shykk let him through.

"This is cargo-team to bridge" He said.

"Go ahead cargo-team" Khark answered.

"I call to report top quality on new goods"

Happy about his transactions, Khark set of to Kenubio 5.


	4. Chapter 4: Guard duty

Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep!

Yumaar was suddenly and without warning pulled out of his deep sleep. His mind struggled to make the transaction between unconscious and awake, to move out of the soft and foggy world of dreams, into the hard reality of white walls and beeping electronics. His alarm-clock automatically turned on the lights, filling the room with dim, blue light. He had been awaken at a most uncomfortable time, this was the night-shift. He pulled on his shirt and his breeches - both in black velvet with a silver embroidery sewed into it. Like most of Yumaars's clothing it was excellent craftsmanship - well fitted for the heir of the throne.

It was dark in the corridor outside as well. The traditional light-bulbs that illuminated it on daytime had been replaced by dim skirtings that ran parallel with the edges of floor and ceiling. Right now the color of choice was blue, but when morning arrived it would turn soft-white, and then bright yellow. Evenings where orange, and then back to blue - just at it was on K`hmary. Yumaar had the big room at the end-wall of the corridor, just like he had the big chair at the end of the dining-room table. For the moment three out of five crew-members where sleeping, only Tux and Yumaar were awake. Tux was about to end his guard-duty, Yumaar was his replacement.

All but one of the floors where penetrated by a spiral stairway that passed through them alongside the inner wall of the command-section. It was only the bridge that was entered through a simple tube with a ladder, a exception that was made in order to get enough room for the computer hardware and life-support systems.

"Hey, nice outfit!" Tux said as Yumaar climbed out of the hole.

"Yeah, birthday-gift from the Earl of Knoxx" Yumaar answered.

"I put some choory and cake aside for you" Tux informed while pointing at the trolley-table with the thermos and open box. Yumaar walked over to take a better look at the cake. It was brown with a layer of red gel on it. He identified it as kushi-cake, not his favorite.

"Looks good" he said anyway. Choory on the other hand... He definitely needed that. choory was a dark liquid with lots of caffeine - or bayani, as the K`hmynians called it. Yummar poured himself a cup while Tux got up from the command chair.

"Anything out of the ordinary at your shift?" He asked.

"Lots of stars and such. A big rock passed us two hours ago" Tux informed.

"Really? How far out?" Yumaar wanted to know. Asteroids where always interesting, so he decided to pump him for everything he had on it.

"About three thousand kilometers away" Tux said.

"Big?" - "About ten kilometers across, very dense. I had to make some minor course adjustments due to its gravity-pull" - "Wow, how many Gs?" - "0,01" - "That is dense" - "Uncharted?" - "Yeah, I named it after my self and sent its course, speed and size home to ground control" - "Well done" - "If it's alright with you I'm going to go sleep now" - "No problem"

Yumaar had satisfied his curiosity, so Tux climbed down the ladder, leaving Yumaar alone in the command-chair with only his cup of choory for company. His eyes made a efficient sweep across the main consoles without finding anything unusual or unsettling. Then he rotated the chair around to take a look at the hind-screen as well. It was located behind the ladder-tube, filling the wall that concealed the small toilet at the back. All the screens where flexible off course, but so far in the journey they had used this screen to display info concerning food reserves, level of clean filtered water, and other things related to life-support. Right now most of the bars and cakes where green, meaning that they where within acceptable parameters and according to the plan made by ground control.

Having confirmed that this group of systems was in order, Yumaar continued his rotation, bringing the chair back to its original position. Stars, stars, stars... How come space around K`hmary was so dull? Their orbital telescopes where transmitting fantastic photos on a almost daily basis - gas clouds in brilliant colors, supernovas, black holes, and even a occasional stone-planet with clouds and plant-life. The problem was that it was all so very, very far away. Seen with the naked eye, the space surrounding them was made out of white dots evenly distributed against a black background. For the last three thousand years or so their night-sky had consisted of a thick, monotone blanket of stars, and before that it had been the milky-way on one side, and completely empty space at the others. It was not as if one could ever view this from the surface. Seeing the clouds lift to reveal the night-sky behind them was a very rare experience - in ancient times it had been seen as a blessing by the gods. As such it was not at all odd that the K`hmynian people had never cared to plot out constellations of animals or mythical creatures in the night sky. It was first with the arrival of the big orbital telescopes that space got fun, and they actually had a telescope on the ship. Well, not exactly - but the cameras attached to their hull never the less combined powerful mechanical zoom with a resolution of several hundred million pixels. Would this be sufficient to get close and intimate with some of the stars? Perhaps making guard duty more interesting? - It was only one way to find out.

Yumaar got up from the command chair and moved over to the navigational console from where the cameras where controlled. The system-menus where pretty logical and pedagogical in their layout, so it was easy for Yumaar to find his way around. It did not take long before he had taken manual control over the front camera. Getting the image transferred to the big main screen was a bit more difficult though, several huge menus with lots and lots of options. When done he zoomed in at a random star, enhancing the image as much as possible without making it grainy. It was a pretty bright star, but several filters kicked in as it grew bigger on the screen. The result was... Still boring. It turned out he had zoomed into a blue giant. It looked dead, no big blazes shot out of its surface, no black spots rotating around it's equator. The info-box at the lower right corner informed him that it was 123 light-years away, and that it's name was "Uby-31" - nothing extraordinary about that.

Yumaar suddenly realized that he had gotten so caught up with his star-gazing that he had forgotten about his choory. When he picked it up for a sip he found out that it already had gotten cold and sour. It was no disaster though, all he had to do was to walk over to the trolley and pour another one from the thermos. On his way back his eyes where drawn towards a blinking screen on the navigational console. A object had popped up on the radar, and now the computer under his feet was busy calculating its course. When the result was brought back up on the screen a second later, it came together with a short "Beep!" from the console speaker - it's is way of summoning the interest of the watcher. Yumaar had almost reached the seat when the consequences of it's discovery finally dribbled into the circuits responsible for activating red alert. The alarm started howling and the lights switched from dim blue to blood red. Yumaar failed to follow the sudden switch from relaxed work-mood to high drama, so he remained calm and tired as he sat down in front of the console, still with the choory-cup in his left hand. The main screen displayed a irregular white dot moving down a almost vertical red line that tilted slightly to the left, splitting the screen in two. The problem that had caused the computer to panic was that the red line passed straight through the icon with the ship-shaped silhouette at the center of the screen. Luckily for Yumaar it managed to remain constructive despite the dire situation. It took only two seconds for it to figure out the most energy-efficient way to avoid the collision.

"Engage evasive maneuver?" the computer asked in red-blinking letters at his screen. Yumaar did not hesitate to click "Yes", that way outsourcing ship-control to the navigational computer for the time being. The propulsion engine took several minutes to heat up, so it was useless for sudden course-changes such as this. Everything had to be done with the guidance-thrusters, powerful hydrogen-oxygen rockets that was attached to the hull at strategic points. The computer ignited all the engines positioned below the bottom floor, sending huge flames into space. Sensing that the movement caused considerable down-pull, the computer turned of the gravity plating, now maintaining gravity on upward acceleration only. The ship was not built to be pushed in this direction, so the construction shrieked and wined in protest against the rough treatment. The computer ignored this plea to stop, determined to save the ship from destruction. Gravity increased to way above two Gs, and than the forward engines were ignited as well. The sudden deceleration felt more like a collision than a course-adjustment. Yumaar suddenly found himself hanging over the armrest, pulled towards the front screen as if the gravity plating stored behind it had suddenly engaged without the propulsion engine working to balance the quotation. The trolley-table, its cakes and thermos slammed into the screen, Yummar dropped his now empty cup in order to use both hands to push himself back up in the seat.

Analyzing the information on the screen, he came to the conclusion that the computer had made the right decision in its choice of evasive maneuver. They were now passing above several fast moving objects, decelerating while simultaneously pushing up and away. There was however one important detail that the computer had completely ignored: Warp-drive was still running. Yumaar put the radar image up on the main screen, opening the main menu on the navigational console. As he found his way to the warp-menu, he felt that the gravitational pull was starting to put a considerable strain on his joints and muscles. The pain in his neck and lower back intensified, Yumaar figured that if this was allowed to continue it would turn him into a hunchback long before the hull-thrusters ran out of gas. Yumaar failed to find the menu that shut it down completely, but at least he managed to find a barometer where he could minimize its effect by dragging a red dot down to the bottom of the jar. The sudden drop of speed caused the computer to pause its maneuver, gravity dropped to zero before climbing up to one. Up to now, several large asteroids had been avoided at the expense of correct speed and course. Sensing that it might be useful, the computer sent out a powerful radar pulse. Its waves moved like ripples through water, hitting three blocks at thousand, two-thousand and four-thousand five hundred kilometers distance. "Damn!" Yumaar thought – they had stumbled across an uncharted asteroid-field. Huge, deadly rocks where all around them, rushing past at breakneck speeds.

" Am I glad to see you!" Yumaar screamed, relieved by the view of Tux climbing up the ladder.

It looked as if he had taken quite a beating on his way up. His white-cotton night-tunic was ripped up at several places, his hair was all messed up, and blood was pouring out of his left nostril. He grumbled unhappily as he saw the messy state of the bridge. The chairs and consoles where still standing on their correct places, bolted to the floor as they where. The problem was the food and drink that had smeared itself all over the front screen before gathering in a mud-like pond between the two foremost consoles. Yumaar got up from the chair in order to leave the navigational chair to Tux.

"Warp is off by the way" he said while strolling over to his usual position in the command-chair.

Tux said nothing, obviously prioritizing his console over chatting with Yumaar. He worked in silence for a while, sending out radar-pulses of different kinds in order to get a better overview of their surroundings. Then he ordered Yumaar to fasten his seat-belt so that he could make some minor course-adjustments without him falling around. The hull-thrusters started working again, sending several hitches and jerks through the ship - this time much gentler though.

"Warp off-line, speed at 6,7 kilometers a second" He said after about half a minutes of deep concentration. Yumaar could see on his face that he had more on his mind, things that he was not yet ready to speak about. He rubbed his left hand against his chin, looking thoughtfully at his screen. The other crew-members arrived, all equally shaken and beaten. According to the rules regarding red alert, they where all to gather at the bridge when the alarm went of. The problem was that the journey from bed to bridge got rather hazardous during turns as sharp and sudden as the ones they had been through. For the servants this was much easier, as their only task was to strap them selves to the closest bed or chair. Yumaar's thoughts flowed over to his servant Kesh, was she okay?

"Can you call up the servants quarter?" He asked Sappi as she sat down by her console. The order was quickly carried out, a link was established between the two rooms.

"All good, no serious injuries" A man replied. It was the same unknown voice that had replied when she had asked everyone to buckle up for acceleration two days back. It was rugged and a bit dark.

"Who's servant is that?" Yumaar wondered.

"It's mine, I brought with me the janitor from my palace back at Duumo." Sappi answered.

Duumo was a small suburban village outside the capital, a place referred to only as "Capital city" or alternatively "Throne city". Yumaar had never been to Duumo, but from what Sappi had told him during earlier conversations, it was pretty nice.

Tux broke into the idle chattering, - "I have a plan" he said. Than he brought the radar-screen back up on the main monitor. According to the map, they where surrounded by pretty hairy space, and unfortunately it looked like they had the worst part ahead of them. The blocks they had passed where all huge stones, sharply defined and several kilometers across. Now came the small pickings, a huge cloud of stone and sand that seemed impossible to avoid. Yumaar cursed, D`jumo sighed, somebody swallowed. Uncertain about the level of direness, everyone looked to Tux for answers. Feeling the eyes of the others resting upon him, he put on his most confident expression.

"Do not worry" He started. "Its not as bad as it looks"

"Reversed tractor-beam, but it's going to cost us" Yumaar proposed.

From his perspective, this was the only way to get through, and it was indeed also the "plan" that Tux had coughed up up. The tractor-beam was a wonderful piece of Ferengian technology that could be set to attract or push away mass, and as long as the space-gravel remained small it could keep them safe even at high speeds. "The plan" was also something that was written into the programming of the navigational computer, so as the computer's plea for emergency course-adjustment was denied, the tractor beam would be turned on when the gravel at collision course came within one kilometers distance.

The ship shook and creaked as they plowed through the cloud. The alarms started howling and the power plant overheated in its heroic attempt to keep the beam going. Loup and Sappi got so scared that they held hands and started crying. Emergency-power could only keep the beam going for so long, and if they were not through when it died they would be shredded to peaces in no more than a few seconds. Watching their energy-levels drop, Yumaar got rather scared himself. Cold sweat started dripping down his forehead, and his throat felt uncomfortably swollen. By the time they finally punched through, he was on the edge of bursting into tears himself.

Silence fell upon the ship as it laid the asteroid-belt behind. The sore sound of Sappi and Loup weeping was perhaps even more uncomfortable than the alarm had been, but it was less intense. Cillion ran over for comfort, the rest remained in their seats.

"That was certainly a disaster" Yumaar stated.

The power plant had gulped down its hydrogen fuel at overload, spending god knows how many gigawatts at the tractor-beam. Than came the unplanned loss of speed and the deviation away from the course plotted out for them by ground control, loss of fuel for the hull-thrusters, and several other negative effects. This could very well lead to the cancellation of the entire journey, a thought so depressive that it made Yumaar tired. His body weighed heavily against the soft and comfortable command-chair, right now he just wanted to sink into it and die. He allowed himself to lean back so that he could stare into the monotone whiteness of the ceiling. The surface reflected the emptiness of his head, and therefore it was relaxing for the spirit.

"The plan worked" Tux said, an attempt to keep the mood up or something equally annoying

"The plan was not a plan" Yumaar protested angrily.

It took some time for Yumaar to pull himself together, and when he did he went straight to bed. Putting the ship back in its proper course was too complex for him anyway, so he would not be of much help to Tux at the bridge. Than came morning, and the light shifted from blue to white. Yumaar overslept, so he did not wake up before it went yellow. The pace of everyday life returned pretty fast, a good and relaxed life that was not all that different from the life they where used to live home in their palaces at K`hmary.

* * *

><p>The inactivity made Yumaar restless, and in the evening he went for a spin in the tread-mill to blow of some steam. The 3D screen in front of him projected the beautiful landscape of Knoxx, a place of dense forests, rivers and waterfalls. The narrow path he ran on followed the curves of the landscape, its small hills and slopes. The treadmill adjusted its angle so that it correlated perfectly with the image projected. Right now it was going downhill towards a small wooden bridge that would take him over a narrow river, continuing past a snug looking little farm at the other side. One of the many charming things about Knoxx was that everything was small. The path would take Yumaar towards the regional capital, a small town with cozy looking houses made in the traditional way. From there it would go uphill, and if he bothered to run through the whole program he would arrive at the castle of Knoxx in an hour or so. Yumaar came to think about the Earle of Knoxx, a giant of a man that perhaps was ill-suited for the place and position – considering the small stature of both his castle, and Knoxx-style architecture in general.<p>

Yumaar reached out for his bottle of blue energy-drink at the plastic shelf that stood beside the treadmill console. Actually he hated the artificial sweetness of that foul drink, but he knew from experience that it made his exercise runs last longer. Today he was feeling fit and energized, so he was thinking about running all the way up to Knoxx castle. The sound of his feet against the ground changed as the underlay switched from fine gravel to old wood. The planks squeaked and groaned as he ran over the bridge, a sound that was mixed with that of crystal clear water flowing through the river below. A flock of koyo-birds twittered as they past over his head, they where flying towards the forest-line some hundred meters behind the thick lawn at the right side of the path. At the other side of the bridge, some kind of odd farm animal grunted happily while chewing a equally odd looking fruit. The farms of Knoxx were weird, involving completely different plants and animals than those used by farmers elsewhere in the kingdom. Yumaar did not know the name of the round spiky fruit that the animal was chewing on, and neither did he know the name of the animal itself. It was pretty big and fat, its four stub feet supported a long, round body. The animal lacked eyes, but to compensate it had lots and lots of long whiskers that went all the way around its snout. It's sharp teeth covered the entire inside out its mouth, giving good protection against the spikes of the fruit. They where also well suited for the task of breaking the solid looking shell that surrounded the soft and juicy interior. The powerful jaw-muscles tightened, causing the fruit to crack open. The animal threw its head backwards and sucked out the good stuff. Than it spit out the remains of the shell. It seemed as if it had a lot of work ahead of it, cause a huge pile of similar fruits were lying behind it, leaning against the blue barn where the creature probably rested when not eating.

Sensing Yumaar's presence, it pointed it's snout towards him while stretching its whiskers out over the low fence that separated them. Having found the spectator acceptable, it's tail started wagging from side to side.

"They don't behave like that in real life you know" A feminine voice suddenly said.

Yumaar sighed, annoyed with the intruder that had sneaked in to burst the bubble of romantic peasant-life that had enthralled him for the last hour or so. He wiped some sweat of his forehead and turned around to face her. It was Loup, the engine-operator on board. Her most attractive features were the radiantly blue skin and big lively eyes, but the nimble and feminine pair of antennas was a good number three. They stood out from the blanket of short yellow hair that covered her well-formed head. Another thing that was well-formed was her body. It's sexy curves were perfectly...

"Stop driveling at me and end the stupid program!" She said, annoyed with becoming the subject of such intense scrutiny.

"Yeah! Yeah!" Yumaar said in a state of depression. The cute farm-animal with the fruit disappeared together with the farm, the landscape, and everything else. Everything was sucked back into the screen it had come from, revealing the white boring walls of reality that Yumaar had doomed himself to spend an eternity within. "What did I think about?" He wondered as he struggled to focus on Loup's message rather than her body.

"Ground control informs us that a solar storm is heading in our direction. It will hit in less than an hour, so we need to drop warp and turn our shield around"

"Am I needed at the bridge? Yumaar asked, then adding: "I would really love to finish the track this time"

"According to protocol everybody are needed on the bridge during turns, no exceptions" She answered in a strict and professional tune of voice. The captain of the ship would put up a very bad example for the others if he started breaking protocol, so Yumaar knew that this was a battle not worth fighting.

"Give me fifteen minutes to freshen up" he said.

"Acceptable" Loup answered before heading out.

Short and efficient strech-out session, Hot shower, fresh clothes. Everything happened in a hurry, so Yumaars hair was all wet when he crashed down at the captains-seat. Yumaar was the last person to enter the bridge, they were ready to start as soon as he had buckled up. The operation ahead of them was very basic, his leadership was hardly needed.

"How far away is the solar storm now?" He asked Tux. Tux had all the radar-images and maps on his console, so if anyone, he would know.

"According to the details given to us by ground control it will hit us in half an hour if we maintain current speed and course"

"What is our current speed and course?" Yumaar asked. It was not as if he didn't know this stuff already, but there was a microscopic chance that deviations or adjustments away from proper course had occurred during his off-time from the bridge.

"Still approaching Snowball at twenty one kilometers a second, full warp" Tux answered.

This was only one half of their top speed, but they had talked it over early in their journey and decided not to spend everything to reach maximum velocity. Unexpected events could occur, events that would require them to burn fuel at unexpected times and places. This had in fact already happened with the uncharted asteroid-belt that almost got them killed. The sudden deceleration done by the front hull-thrusters had to be made up for, and in order to not spend all the fuel at the hind-thrusters they had decided to make a gentle push with the propulsion engine in order to get them back on track, using a small portion of their helium surplus.

"Goody. If we switch of warp in twenty minutes and turn about, will that be okay with you guys?" Yumaar wondered.

"I say we do it right away, better safe than sorry" Tux opined.

"Any other opinions at the matter?" Yumaar asked while looking around the room for cues of dissent.

"Isn't the engine vulnerable to incoming space-dust and gravel without the shield?" Sappi wondered.

"Good point" Tux agreed "But the solar storm is much more dangerous, We will be showered in particle-radiation and ionized gas"

Everyone in the room knew the basics of space-physics from various crash-courses, but only Tux had proper knowledge about the math behind it. And ground control of course, ground control would know.

"What does ground-control say?" Yumaar asked Sappi. As their communication operator, she had the entire message on the console in front of her chair.

"I'll put it on the main monitor" She answered, not bothering to read the whole thing out loud.

It turned out that ground control had done their homework well. The message was extensive, filled with graphs, videos, math and other complexities.

Tux uttering a small "Hmm" every now and then as she scrolled through it.

"We definitely need to turn around, this is a big one" he said after she had arrived at the bottom.

"It would be cool if we had a reserve shield that we could move to the back" D`jumo fantasized.

"To much extra weight" Tux answered shortly.

Everything went smoothly and without drama. Tux turned the warp-drive off, and then Loup turned the ship around in a slow, gentle move. The solar-storm was a bit boring though. By the time it reached the ship it was so out-watered that nothing could be seen by the naked eye. According to the scanners however, some very intense radiation was going on there. Had this been in the old days of space explorations everyone would have had to take their space-suits on and crawl together inside a box of lead or gold, but these days new innovations within radiation-blocking materials and technology had made it much easier to cope with this invisible killer. The electromagnetic radiation-shield soaked up a lot of radiation, only a small percentage made it all the way up to the outer hull. Most of the particles who made it that far were blocked by several thin and light layers of rad-blocking wonder-materials built in between the outer and inner hull. The microscopic percentage that made it all the way into the interior of the ship was under normal circumstances not bigger than the solar radiation one would expect to receive during a nice summer day at K`hmary.

With warp of they where back at their standard non-warp speed of 7,5 kilometers a second for the duration of the storm, and the minutes that it would take to turn back around. Since nothing happened, Yummar started to think about D`jumo's idea about a movable reserve-shield. Such a shield would have given them a extra benefit as it would allow them to maintain warp also during solar storms. In theory they could maintain warp now as well, but if they turned the warp-engine on while facing the sun it would contract space they had just moved through, that way slowing them down instead of speeding them up. Their speed of 7,5 kilometers would be divided instead of multiplied with the space-contraction achieved. 7,5 divided by 2,8 would give them a speed of... 2,5? Yumaar was not so good at math, but...What if he was incorrect in his general assumption? Perhaps it was time for a field test?

"We could test it, but it will take some time to get the results" Tux replied when he aired the idea. Nothing interesting was going on at his console, so he had leaned back in his chair, looking at Nibulus who shone towards them from the middle of the main monitor. She was not as bright now as she used to be, but it would still hurt to look straight at her without image-filtering. The camera automatically dimmed the light down, choking many of the smaller stars in the process. Only a few exceptionally bright ones managed to carve through.

"How come?" Yumaar wondered.

"We measure our speed by swopping radio-waves with an orbital satellite. It would take time to get the results in" Tux replied without turning his head away from the screen. He seemed completely fascinated by the yellow ball that was Nibulus. From this distance one couldn't see the flames shooting out of it, thus it looked less angry and more stable than it did from K`hmary. Yumaar hadn't quite understood Tux's answer, at least not the explanation for why it would take time. He was not in the mood to stuff new knowledge into his head right now, so he skipped past the "why" question, instead expressing the next thought in line:

"If we can do a test before the storm passes we won't loose any time"

"work, work work" Tux replied tiredly. Then he pulled himself up in his seat and bent forward over the console.

The warp-engine worked just as they thought it would. The ship slowed down, and went back up to normal speed when they turned it of. This was interesting stuff because it could help them save a lot of rocket-fuel on acceleration and deceleration in and out of orbit. It was too bad that their supply of hydrogen for the power plant and warp-engine was even more limited than their supply of helium for propulsion, but everyone agreed that this might be something to keep in mind.

"I'm going back down" Yumaar said when everything had returned yo normal. With the front shield pointing the right direction, full warp and no solar storms there was no reason to stick around, or so he thought:

"You are on guard duty!" Loup reminded him.

"Fuck me sideways!" Yumaar screamed spontaneously before he managed to suppress his reaction.

"Wow!" Loup said, shocked by the sudden outburst.

"Don't worry, I'll keep you company" Sappi shot in while Cillion simultaneously urged Yumaar to watch his language. Yumaar folded his hands together and sighed, he was not at all in the mood for five hours of boredom, stuck in the command chair.

But guard duty it was, there was no way to avoid the bridge. "work, work, work" Yumaar mumbled for himself as the others had left, copying the way Tux had said it about half an hour earlier. Only Sappi remained, just as she had promised. Guard duty turned out okay though. Sappi ordered her servant to bring some food up, and then Kesh arrived with her broom and bucket. While the nobles had guard duty, the servants had clean-day, and today it was Kesh's turn. She had been through all the floors in the command-section, so it was not at all odd that she was dead tired when finally done with the bridge.

"Good as new" She said while dumping down on the floor beside Yumaar.

"Take the guest chair" he said. The bridge was equipped with a extra chair beside his command-chair, but usually it was concealed under the floor. The arm-rest had a special button that opened the hatch and brought it up.

"Comfy" She said while leaning back in it.

"Isn't it cool to think about how big space is?" She added after some seconds of silence.

"Yeah, it takes almost an hour for messages from ground control to reach us" Sappi informed with her mouth filled with Urayha-beef and Singh-juice. She had lowered her console so that she could use it as a table, her plate and glass rested on it.

"And radio signals travels almost as fast as light, Isn't that so?" Kesh wondered.

"Almost" Sappi confirmed, but she did not bother to spell out the exact number.

As his communication operator she undoubtedly knew it by heart, but Yumaar didn't, and it annoyed him. He had heard it a couple of times on lectures and such, but forgotten. Both numbers were pretty equal though, very close to 300 000 kilometers a second. Yumaar was a bit angry at himself for always forgetting the exact numbers, a weak spot in his intellect.

"And in a few days we will pass Ke`hem`eshet, and then we will be further out in space than any K`hmynian before us"

Seeing the fascinated look on Kesh's face, Sappi had decided to add a little extra candy for her mind.

"Wow!" She said joyfully, her eyes sparkled in wonder.


	5. Chapter 5: Field trip

At a planet hundred and twenty light-years away, captain Dall`ek of the Klingon defense force was ready for another day of duty to the empire. His ship was named "Fist of Kahless" after the first emperor, and like the majority of Klingon ships, it was from the "bird of pray" series, a design that had become a symbol of Klingon militarism throughout the Alpha quadrant. The birds of pray where small and compact crafts with much weaponry, engines and shielding. The floor-space was minimal, and everything was accessible from the main corridor that ran from the bridge up front, to the engine-room at the back. With its modest length of only hundred and ten meters there was no need for such decadent features as turbolifts aboard. The design was made for the simple and hard lifestyle of the Klingon army, a life of rank and file where civilian benefits such as comfort and privacy where unheard of.

Dall`ek was a formidable Klingon, two meters and twenty centimeters tall and strong as a ox. He was dressed in his field uniform of chain-mail undershirt beneath a sturdy leather vest. The chain mail ended by the knees, and from here and down the pants that covered it was stuffed into his black leather boots. This was his everyday outfit at the bridge, not the full combat-gear that he would use for the upcoming field exercise – the only reason for why they were orbiting this planet. Life on board a Klingon bird of pray was cramped, and even though they had a gym and a holographic target-range, it could not compensate for actual field maneuvers out in the open. Today they would run up a ten kilometers tall mountain, do some shooting-practice and throw some grenades around. When done they would run down again and repeat the exercise by the foot of the mountain.

The full Klingon combat-gear was extensive, much too heavy to be worn by a human. Protective plating was added to the elbow and knees, protective gloves for the hands, a shield-belt was strapped around the waist. The traditional ba`haleth dueling-blade was attached to the back, and a sash made from metal links ran the across the chest from the right shoulder. Almost everything the Klingons made was hard and solid - the sash being no exception. Many Klingon sashes were used for decorative purposes - the Klingon equivalent for a tie one might say. But these sashes were thinner and lighter, lacking the slots for energy cells and grenades that was built into the robust military variety that Dall`ekk wore.

Dall`ek looked around the room, wondering if it was not something he had forgotten. Chain mail, leather vest, elbow and knee plating, shield belt, ammo sash... Hmm, something was missing. His hand swept across his belt, fumbling after something that was not there. Aha, it was the D`k-tagh, the traditional dagger that Klingons used for everything from cutting food to murder. Dall`ek's D`k-tagh was currently lying at the table by his thin, hard mattress. He had used it the night before to cut bread, the remaining crumbles were still scattered around it. He put the knife in the belt holster and walked out of the room, into the empty corridor. Only a skeleton crew remained at the ship, everyone that mattered was waiting for him at the ground.

Tekk 3 was a planet with huge variations in climate and landscape. This place had everything from scorching hot desserts, to jungles, to endless plains of kilometer thick ice. While feeble and dumb seen from the Klingon perspective, the indigenous population had never the less managed to adapt to most of these environments. When the Klingons had first arrived there had been huge tribes of them everywhere, but now they where restricted to a few big reservoirs. Because it was positioned within a specially vulnerable spot at the border of the Klingon empire, the high council had invested a lot on its development and industrialization. After almost a century of hard work, a full production-line of warships had been established. The resources extracted from Tekk's metal-rich crust would be used to produce more birds of pray for the empire. This world would be used as a spearhead for further conquests into the neutral gap that separated Klingon space from that who belonged to the Romulan Empire on one side, and the Human dominated "United Federation of Planets" at the other.

There was one region of Tekk 3 that Dall`ek was specially found of. It was a mountainous area of the north-west inland that reminded him of his childhood at Qo`nos, the Klingon home-world. The tall mountains where overgrown with dark green moss, and the air was still fresh, despite the massive industrialization that had taken place under Klingon rule. The factory-cities had grown up around the big mines had expanded steadily as more workers had poured in from the core-worlds. From orbit these cities looked like dark-gray stains at the landscape, wounds of dead tissue that consumed it's natural colors. With the production-line complete however, there was no need for further urban expansion. These days Tekk 3 pushed out a new bird of prey a week, so the only thing missing was air-filters and recyclers that could clean up the toxic byproducts of production. This was the final step of colonization, a step that reassured Dall`ek that he could breathe the same clean air whenever he returned to this beautiful place for military exercises.

The computer understood some basic vocal orders, and since the coordinates for his drop-point was pre-programmed, all he had to do was to walk up at the platform and scream "Energize!". Goodbye small and boring transporter room, hello big mountains and fresh air. These were the two things that Dall`ek had looked forward to for the last couple of weeks, but he had forgotten all about the sensation of natural sun-light against his skin. Aaah! Could life be better? Dall`ek smiled from ear to ear as he peered through the bright beams of light, across the open landscape that he had been teleported into. The ground was soft, his boots sank into it as he stood there. "Swoop!" it said as he pulled the left one up of the ground - a welcome change from the hard metal floor of the ship. The air was still moist from a recent rain-shower, meaning that the mountain-side was muddy and slippery. This added a extra challenge for his warriors, men who needed to be hard as steel in order to face the enemies of the empire in glorious battle. Klingons had to be prepared to fight anywhere, under any conditions, mud or desserts, mountains, snow and ice, vacuum and atmosphere - defending the empire with religious zeal.

Dall`ek plodded through the mud, continuing over the small river that separated him from his men.

"Listen up you snails and scoundrels! He screamed the moment he had stepped up on their side. Dall`ek was actually pretty proud of his men and the way he had managed to mold them into the elite warriors that they had become. Never the less he insisted on screaming profanities and insults at them when ever it suited him. It was all part of the military style, a style that was inherited from cadets to officers as generation upon generation of warriors rose to fill the shoes of the officers and generals that had trained them. When he was certain that he had gotten the attention of his men, Dall`ek explained the general plan for the day.

"Move it! Move it!" His second in command Jaakh screamed the second he finished speaking.

He managed to whip them into action pretty fast, but he had to resort to violence to get it done. A small band of lazy youngsters was to slow to get up, so he kicked the closest one in his butt and than kept hitting him in the head with his phaser rifle until he picked his act together and started running. Dall`ek figured he should pose as a good example, and ran up front to lead. Jaakh picked up his pace to keep up with him, the rest of the gang followed closely behind. There where thirty five of them all together, thirty five big Klingons in full armor and phaser rifles between their hands - a sight that would make the blood freeze in the veins of most other sentient species in the Alpha quadrant. Klingons had thick foreheads, but they did not bulge outwards as they did with the Ferengi. Instead their rough texture formed several hills that stretched vertically from their thick eyebrows all the way up to the top center of the head. From here and back their heads where covered by black curly hair that usually stopped by their shoulders. Klingons males never cut away their hair-growth, so most of them grew long, thin mustaches as well.

Jaakh started humming on one of the traditional Klingon war-hymns, making the others sing along.

_I die with my teeth in the enemies throat!_

_I die with my knife in my enemies chest!_

_And in the next world I shall kill the foe a thousand times!_

_Who-Ha! Klingon-style! _

_Who-Ha! Klingon-style!_

It was a good song, a song that lifted the spirit and eased burden of the battle armor and the steep mountainside. Klingon lungs where big, but the increasingly thin air in combination with the physical strain took its toll never the less. The song was repeated a couple of times, but it was only a matter of time before it got too hard to keep both activities going at the same time. The twentieth repetition of the verse became the last, from then on everyone had enough with getting enough oxygen into their systems. Dall`ek felt his legs stiffening. His big Klingon hearth pounded hard against his chest, and his lungs hurt. He started to regret the hard start, so he decided to make a gradual slowdown. If done subtle enough it would happen without anyone noticing that they were running slower than before, and than it would not be revealed that he had gotten tired. It was at least comforting to know that he was not the only one. One of the veterans in his crew collapsed behind him, unable to continue. He was lying face down against the rocks, the blade of the Ba`haleth on his back blinking in the sharp sunlight. "Ha!" Dall`ek thought when he turned around to witness the defeat. The rest of the band turned around again and continued running, but it was unclear if the veteran had fell or collapsed. When some meters had passed between them he got back up on his feet, struggling to close the gap.

The end of the rocky path at the hillside gave way to a much muddier and more slippery experience. Unable to keep their balance, the Klingons fell to the ground and started crawling rather than running. Several small mud-slides were triggered as they advanced upwards, sliding, rolling and falling back down again. When they finally reached the top they where all covered in mud from top to toe, a thick brown layer that would have locked their guns, had they not been covered in a protective plastic sheeting. The sun was much stronger up at the mountain plateau than further down, so the clay rapidly congealed and fell of in big flakes. Dall`ek turned around and counted the number of heads, happy to see that everyone had made it to the top - even the veteran that almost gave up. This time Dall`ek had made some special preparations for them, so they where going to have a more dramatic experience than the usual billboard-targets. He turned his back on his men again, looking for the first creature to appear. The hologram-projector had been programmed to start when his communicator was within the right range, and according to plan this should be right here at this spot.

Suddenly a ferocious Human in a blue and black star-fleet uniform popped up from his hiding place under a rock less than thirty meters away. Filled with rage and hatred, the wile creature ran straight at them with a huge ax between his hands. Jaakh - who was standing by Dall`ekk's side - looked dead scared. His eyes and mouth wide were open, his body frozen in terror. The Human was fast, he leaped towards them like a tiger, raising his battle-ax in order to draw fist blood. Than came the sound of numerous phaser-rifles. The well-aimed energy-bolts went straight through his chest, stopping the creature in mid-air. As the human fell to the ground, a young and aggressive Klingon named Sovan jumped at him in order to finish the job with his dagger. What would otherwise have been both a lethal and a technically perfect jump-and-stabb penetration became involuntary comical as Sovan's knife slashed straight through the holographic projection without meeting any more resistance then what the thin air had to offer. His knife broke as it hit the rock bellow, and his body followed right behind. Sovan had expected the soft Human body to dampen the fall, but instead he dived head-first into a sharp rock. Painful as it might have been, this was still a valuable lesson. Partly because holographic images were used in real warfare as well, partly because it was superfluous to stab a unshielded enemy soldier that just had taken twenty phaser-bolts through the chest. Sovak put his left hand over the wound that had appeared in his head, but he could not stop the black blood from pouring out of it. As numerous phaser-bolts zapped through the air above him, he made a wise to stay down and not get in the way. While he had been focused on his head-injury, numerous Humans had beamed down to the mountain plateau in order to avenge the death of their comrade with the ax. Some of them were armed with phaser pistols, and the Klingons had to be fast in order to pin them down before they got a chance to fire.

"Hit em! Hit em! Hit em!

A Klingon screamed, high on adrenaline. A attack-wave of Humans armed with arm-held energy-shields and long-swords charged against them. Numerous phaser-bolts slammed against the shields, disintegrating in sharp flashes of light and heat. The Humans behind them remained intact, marching relentlessly against them in a state of blood-rage.

"Grenades!" Jaakh screamed.

It took no more than two seconds for their best grenade-thrower to set the timer and lob a plasma-grenade between the feet of the enemy. The explosion covered them in a fog of super-heated gas that caused them to ignite as if they where soaked in gasoline. The burning bodies fell lifeless to the ground, but in that very moment a phaser-pistol made a successful sweep across the crowd of Klingons. Azobb, Ruygh and a bunch of other warriors were hit, their faces went grumpy as they laid themselves down on the rocks. The Humans had claimed their first victims, the battle intensified.

"Spread out!" Jaakh ordered.

As long as they stayed clustered together like this it would be much easier to take them out in a single sweep. This was elementary tactics, but easy to forget in the heat of battle. The warriors did as ordered, each finding a separate stone to use as cover. While doing so, the wall of fire was maintained, that way hindering the Humans from getting a good shot at any of them as they scattered. Now the battle moved into a new phase. The Humans had given up running them down with close combat weaponry, instead copying the Klingon tactic of shooting from behind cover. A few grenades where thrown against them, killing many and wounding several others. Klingons where not immune to this hazard either. When the Humans decided to return fire using grenades of their own, several Klingons where caught within the radius of their blue lights. The battle was drawing closer to its end, and Dall`ek was curious to see who won. So far he had not interfered in the shooting, instead observing his warriors and how their training was put to use.

At the look of things, the Klingons had the upper hand at the moment. Dall`ek however, knew that the Humans had a nasty surprise up their sleeve, a trick that was as old as war itself. Much to his disappointment, his warriors seemed to focus on the visible enemy only, forgetting to look over their shoulders. The ongoing barrage was successful, forcing the Humans further and further back, while keeping them from returning fire. Several fell, but the threat was far from eliminated by the time the first humans climbed up the mountain-side behind them. Four Klingons were hit in the back as two fast and elegant beams of phaser-fire swept over the rocky landscape. The others whirled around to return fire, remaining in cover behind the rocks that shielded them from the enemy at the other side. They where to slow, the newcomers saw what was coming and ducked in time. Outmaneuvered, the Klingons did a last attempt at retaking control of the battleground by hurling numerous plasma-grenades in both directions. The screams of pain that filled the air from both sides bore testimony to the lethal efficiency of the tactic, but the problem of having to deal with enemies on two flanks remained unsolved. A Human popped up at a surprising spot, he killed several Klingons before a shower of badly aimed phaser-bolt forced him back into hiding. A second later Dall`ek himself was shot by a yellow beam that hit him straight in the head. Planets and stars danced before his eyes, the intense light had left him blinded and disoriented. Beams of phaser cut through the air at his left and right side, and when more plasma grenades rolled in through the stones it was game-over for the Klingons.

The battle ended in a mix of blue bubbles representing expanding plasma-explosions and a grid of phaser-beams that crossed through the Klingon camp. At this time only five warriors remained, and these were killed numerous times while lowering their guns.

"We surrender" Jaakh said duly while three phaser-beams attempted to carve him up at the legs, hip and chest.

"Computer, end hologram!" Dall`ek ordered.

The humans - both live and dead ones – disappeared together with their guns and grenades. Peace and tranquility returned to the mountaintop plateau. Only a few black stains from the Klingon grenades and phaser rifles bore witness to the dramatic battle that had just taken place here. The Klingons who had died rose to their feet again.

* * *

><p>Dall`ek was well underway on his decent from the mountaintop when his communicator started beeping. He picked it up and opened the screen. The sharp-edged black symbols of the Klingon alphabet spelled the following message:<p>

"_Return to bridge immediately – Sign Main-comp, Fist of Kahless,"_

"Damn!" he thought. He would miss the shoot-out at the bottom, the only chance his warriors had to learn from the mistake they had done at the top. It was positive though, that his knees would not need to suffer. Dall`ek found the ascending of mountains much more enjoyable than he did descending them. Weak knees ran in the family, so it naturally followed that ten kilometers of steep downhill running could not go unpunished. Less pain, but also less fun. A Klingon warrior could not allow himself to become afraid of pain, but neither could he ignore requests from the main computer. The computer only sent such automatic calls in three different situations: One was some kind of fatal system-failure, the other was if the ship was attacked, the third was incoming subspace messages with top-priority signature. The last one was the most probable, perhaps a mission of the daring and dangerous sort, a mission filled with glorious combat and sacrifice for the empire. How great wouldn't that be?

During transport his molecules was turned into waves of energy that could be regrouped at any given coordinates within range of the transporter. While clustering back together into the original shape it was extremely important that the subject of transportation did not move. Therefore a force-field was set up around the body, keeping it in the exact position it had been in when the beam-up procedure started. If the transporter operator did not adjust the angle of the subject so it matched the angle of the floor, or if the subject was beamed out in an odd position it could cause him to fall over when the force-field lifted. Such incidents always caused healthful laughter among the bystanders, no matter how hard the fall. - Klingon humor was as rough as the Klingon species.

Dall`ek did not fall, and he was alone in the room when the force-field dropped. The prospect of battle made him eager, so he ran over to his command-seat as soon as he was free to move. The room was silent except from the sound of his boots against the metal floor. No alarms meant that he could remove attack and system-failure as possible causes, leaving only one possible reason for why the computer had summoned him: Top-priority sub-space message. All such messages were stored at the communication console, so Dall`ek rerouted its controls over to the touch-screen at his armrest and put it up on the main at the front wall.

It was the Klingon general Kha-hutt that had hailed him. As his features appeared on screen, their eyes met through time and space. Over the eyes sat two pairs of thick eyebrows under foreheads so bony and so robust that neither of them would suffer any serious damage if a average human took his best swing at them with a bat. Dall`ek was somewhere between young adult and middle-aged, the general was old and grizzled. His disheveled eyebrows had turned ash-gray, same with the thick hair that poured out from behind the front plate of his skull. It clustered into thick dreadlocks on its way down to his shoulders - it was obvious that the old man never groomed his considerable mane. His right hand clutched itself into a fist that he put up before his chest in front of the heart. This was the traditional military greeting of the Klingons, a sign of respect and duty. Dall`ek had enormous respect for the old general, so he straightened up and returned the gesture even though he knew very well that the general was not watching him at the other side. According to the small peace of text at the bottom-left corner, the recording had traveled several hours through space before it reached him, all the way from the Thugg-Krokk system ninety-five light-years away.

"Greetings Dall`ek - son of house Dalius" Kha-hutt started formally.

What followed was hardly worth the time of such a highly decorated general as Kha-hutt. A uncharted and unnamed star was passing into Klingon territory, Dall`ek was to take his men for a little sightseeing among the planets that circled it. Not unexpectedly Kha-hutt wanted them to report back to him if they found anything of value or interest. Sigh... The star and it's planets was most probably dead, if not inhabited by some pathetic, feeble form of half-witted indigenous population that they could plunder for the sport of it. Such things were fun for a while, but Dall`ek was ready for something more - he wanted a enemy that fought back. Humans maybe - those folks could bite back in anything except close combat if forced to - or even better: Romulans. Fierce, efficient warriors with sharp intellects and massive, beautifully designed starships. The only thing that was wrong with them was that they didn't seem to enjoy war as much as Klingons did. They where fast to retreat if low in numbers, and they only attacked if superior in force. This logical and rational style of tactics seemed like bad sportsmanship to the Klingons, who preferred risky missions and glorious battles that ended in either victory against all odds, or heroic defeats and last stances. Both ways worked, but this new star had passed through neither Human or Romulan space. If not completely dead it would never the less be untouched by the major superpowers of the Alpha-quadrant, and therefore a boring place to hang around.

Dall`ek walked out of the bridge, heading back to his quarters to relieve himself of the heavy battle-armor. Soon his warriors would return from the exercise, and then it would be time to eat. Dall`ek had decided that they would be served a proper meal today, something better than the boring food-packs they usually survived on. Had his men knew that Dall`ek had stored a fine meal of gagh worms in the storage room it would probably have disappeared a long time ago, and this was why only the captain and the chef had access. Gagh was among Dall`ek's absolute favorites in the Klingon cuisine. Eaten alive, the gagh-worms would attempt to squirm, jump or wiggle their way out and away. The Klingons liked them because they never gave up, their spastic battle against death continuing even after they had been chewed to peaces and swallowed. A meal of gagh carried deep symbolism with it because the struggling gagh-worms represented the warrior spirit, while the Klingon who successfully ate and digested the worms represented Klingon superiority and victory. Right now the gagh worms were frozen in cryo-sleep, and with the chef busy shooting holograms Dall`ek could safely go down and start the awakening-process without stealing his job. Gagh was best served with Warnog, a Klingon ale that was not so different from human beer. The question was if there would be enough for everyone, many barrels had been drained during the celebrations that had followed the successful plundering of Lamado-2.

The big and dark storage-room was half-empty. Only two barrels remained, enough to flush down the gagh, but nothing more. From here on it would be food-packs and recycled water. Tight budgets kept Dall`ek from gathering new supplies at the surface, not so much due to economic concerns as it was about the Klingon disapproval of decadence and undeserved luxury. Still, a healthy Klingon never said no to a good feast, and this was perhaps precisely why the war on decadence was so relentless. Dall`ek sighed and bowed his head. Food packs and recycled water... Week after week after week. It took time to swallow such a bitter fate, no matter how extremely healthy and filled with vitamins and minerals the food-packs were. Dall`ek was still depressed when he got back to the bridge, his body felt heavy as he crashed down in his command chair. The thought about the upcoming gagh-meal was uplifting though. Fat and juicy, sprawling and squirming worms washed down with ice cold Warnog. - Yummy.

A few hours later, the mess hall was filled with sleeping Klingons and empty food-bowls. Dall`ek still felt heavy in his command chair, but this time it was not due to depression. His belly was filled to the brink with ale and worms, some still kicking. Dozing of with the others undoubtedly felt tempting to the officers at the bridge as well, but first they had to put the ship in motion. They had postponed their departure long enough. According to protocol they should have left immediately after receiving the message, and Dall`ek had undoubtedly done so had it not been for the long distance. The Nibulus system that had passed into their territory so recently was a week away at maximum warp, so what difference would an hour or two extra do? Dall`ek was well aware that such thoughts were lazy and disrespectful towards the burden of duty, but once in a while a Klingon captain could allow such luxuries.

The system was running smoothly, full warp was established without any surprises. At this speed the stars became like crystals of snow against the windscreen of a automobile in momentum. Considering their distance of several light-years each, the enormous speed at which they were traveling was almost impossible to grasp. Dall`ek liked to watch the stars move. In this section of space almost every one of them had planets or artificial satellites in orbit, many with Klingon colonies. This knowledge made him feel like a giant. It was as if each star that passed by was no bigger than a snowflake against the enormous windscreen that was their forward monitor, his fellow Klingons outside the ship reduced to microscopic particles sitting on the grains of dust that circled them. This was a childish idea off course, an illusion that was partly caused by the warp-bubble and the visual distortions it created.


	6. Chapter 6: The outpost

Jonas McDonald had just finished starfleet academy, and now he now he was about to begin his first assignment as an ensign. His destination was outpost number 32, a combined observatory and scientific station that circled a newly formed star named BY-36. His bag was packed, and he was ready for departure. Jonas was looking forward to leave the narrow and impersonal guest cabin that had been his home for the last couple of weeks. Everything about big starships such as the Enterprise seemed antiseptic and cold, like living in a hotel. As a new ensign on his first tour off-world it was difficult to know off course, but Jonas had a feeling that it would be easier escape the hotel-like feeling on smaller ships and installations. He hated the antiseptic and featureless corridors, the inane, pseudo-modern artwork that had been placed at regular intervals in a half-hearted attempt at loosening up the cold and professional atmosphere of the ship. The permanent crew-members of the Enterprise made up for the impersonal coldness of its public spaces by adding distinct personal styles to their living quarters, but unfortunately Jonas was not allowed to do so with the guest-quarter he had been given.

Apparently, Enterprise was in a busy mood at the moment. One half of the crew spent all their waking hours chained to their respective consoles, the other half ran around with memory-sticks, tools and messages. The most interesting crew-member was undoubtedly Spock, a Vulcan whose favorite hobby was to sneak up on people and tell them how "illogical" they where in everything from ways of getting a task done, to personal relationships. Having listened as he spoke his mind on such things, Jonas had come to wonder how the Vulcan spaceships were organized, and if the application of Vulcan-style logic could help reduce stress and relieve the crew. Spock spent most of his free hours at the recreation-room where he was playing multi-level chess with the other bridge-officers. As it were with most Vulcans, Spock radiated authority, experience and expertise. Jonas had been afraid to approach the dignified and strict looking superior officer with his humble question, it had taken quite some time to build up the necessary courage. One afternoon he got a hold of Spock between two games of chess. Spock had heard him out, his face still and emotionless as always. Then he had replied: "There is much room for improvement, I'm working on it"

Spock was the only one of the bridge-crew that Jonas had spoken to during his stay, and as departure drew closer, it begun to worry him that he had still not talked to the captain of the ship, a rising star within starfleet named James T Kirk. Before Jonas had beamed aboard, a computer-program had gone through the schedules for those spaceships at dock, and upon discovering that the Enterprise would pass close by, it had reserved a room for him her. The only welcome-committee he had encountered as he walked on board was the machine that gave him his slots for food and laundry. It was however, fully possible that the level of mechanization and digitalization did not stretch all the way to the command level. Jonas feared that captain Kirk would pass the outpost without as much as a single console-beep reminding him that he was supposed to drop someone off. To reassure himself against such a misfortune Jonas figured that he needed to find the captain himself and talk to him.

It had taken him some time to locate the captains quarter, and now he was finally here, waiting for Kirk to drop by. He couldn't be at the bridge always, could he? Jonas sat with his back leaned up against the wall, his legs resting against the gray floor of the hallway. Up here one could not hear the humming from the engine-room as well as one could from the guest-quarters. Even though the ship was penetrating space at full warp, the sound of the machinery at work felt subtle and distant. Jonas was bored, so very bored. He wished he had a book or something similar to help the time pass, but he had not. It was only him, the naked walls of the corridor, and that same old humming of the engines that had filled his ears for several weeks now.

Jonas was starting to feel sorry for himself when he finally heard the door of the turbo lift open at the end of the corridor. He wanted to look respectable when faced with a superior officer, so he got up on his feet in a hurry. The person moving out of the turbolift was approaching with quick steps, Jonas hardly got any time to brush and straightening out his Khaki-colored uniform before captain Kirk rounded the corner that so far had concealed the two men from each other. Kirk had probably expected the corridor to be empty, he froze for a second while looking towards the stranger with surprised eyes.

The captain had a squared face with brown hair that was combed backwards. He looked like a average man in his mid thirties. Looks could be deceiving though, Kirk's steep and rapid career progression was completely abnormal, in fact he was the youngest captain ever to rule over a constitution-class starship. Kirk had an almost magical ability to head straight into trouble and drama wherever he went. Such a trait could be lethal in the end, but so far Kirk had managed to stay on top of things, becoming quite a celebrity in the process.

"Ensign he? I thought you were a cadet?" Captain Kirk asked when Jonas had introduced himself.

"Eh, hm. Ensign, yeah - Straight from starfleet. Listen, eh, - it's about my departure to outpost 32"

The words remained hanging in the air, suspended over a foggy valley of uncertainty. Something had surprised captain Kirk again, his eyebrows lifted for a second, causing furrows to appear in his forehead.

"Leaving us so soon, are you?" He asked.

"Yeah, I have this assignment at the science station, I'm going to help professor Ioannis Demetriou with various tasks" Jonas informed.

"Really? I thought you were supposed to work with Scotty in engineering?" Kirk answered.

"Nope, you might have some kind of computer dysfunction, I'm going to outpost 32" Jonas insisted

"Jonas McDonald?" Kirk asked.

"Yeah, Jonas McDonald" Jonas McDonald answered, repeating his name for the second time in their conversation. This Kirk-guy was starting to annoy him.

"There is two of you then." Kirk answered thoughtfully.

Kirk was as right about that. A closer scrutiny of the passenger-list revealed that there were two Jonas McDonald aboard, one passenger and one new permanent crew member that was indeed working with Scotty in engineering.

Jonas had not actually seen the outpost from the outside when he arrived at it. Enterprise was a ship with few windows, and none of them were built into the walls of his guest quarter, the transporter-room, or the corridors that separated them from each other. Outpost 32 on the other hand, had plenty of windows, and the transporter-platform he was beamed on to was no exception. Just as he had re-materialized, he got a glimpse of Enterprise as she jumped back into warp. The Enterprise disappeared in a flash of light, the warp-bubble made it look like space and its stars was nothing more than a thin wallpaper that the big ship teared a hole in as it jumped through. Bright light flowed through the rip it had created through space and time, but it took only a fraction of a second for the wallpaper to close, bringing space back to normality. Jonas eyes rested for a second on the spot where the Enterprise had disappeared. According to Kirk they were heading for a dense cluster of asteroids that was floating around between this outpost and its nearest star. "Definitely not the most exiting stop on the trip" Kirk had said while following Jonas down to the transporter-room.

Captain Kirk was a busy man on a important quest. The Enterprise would soon enter uncharted space, and here it would remain for five years, visiting various planets and stars that had so far only had been studied at safe distance through telescope-lenses. Space was vast, filled with places and phenomenons that were within starfleet's scope of interest, the perfect place for a bold adventurer like Kirk. Jonas would have loved to join the Enterprise in its mission, but unfortunately he had failed to rise above mediocrity during his years at the academy, and the Enterprise only hired the best of the best.

The entrance-door to the transporter room opened to make way for a smiling figure. Jonas recognized the bold head and squared glasses from a photo in his assignment-file. It was Ioannis Demetriou, the chief scientist and captain of the station. Jonas stepped down from the transporter platform and walked towards him. They met half-way between the door and the platform, Ioannis smiled a broad welcoming smile that caused deep wrinkles to appear around the dimples of his middle-aged face. His handshake was a bit too firm for Jonas taste, but to his defense it was not because he was one of those idiots who believed the qualities of a man correlated with his ability to crush the hands of new acquaintances. Rather, it was because he was eager about something - some kind of dream that Jonas arrival had brought closer to reality. Ioannis talked in fast, yet vague phrases, using dramatic gesticulation to underline his words. Jonas understood that he was about to be set to work, but what Ioannis wanted him to do remained unclear.

Ioannis was wearing a long and white lab-coat that flickered behind him as he walked out the door. Jonas tagged along, into a smaller room with a big garbage-disposal machine on one side, and what looked like a miniature tram at the other. Ioannis walked up to it, opened the glass door and climbed in. Since outpost 32 was a small installation its means of transportation was rudimentary and old- fashioned, nothing like the fast moving turbolifts that rushed around within the Enterprise. Absence of gravitational dampeners meant that one could actually feel its acceleration as its squeaky wheels started turning. It was running on some kind of electric engine that made a lot of noise, ruptures and asperities in the rails caused constant shaking. During his studies at the academy, Jonas had learned that space-stations such as this one often were rough and crudely designed. Unlike starships they didn't need to endure the brutal G-forces created by steep acceleration, so advanced countermeasures like for example structural-integrity shields could be dropped. Some stations were carved out from within asteroids, some were made from the leftovers of discarded starships, and some - such as this one - was made up from huge containment modules originally built to store radioactive waste. The engineering corpse had wielded them together so that they formed a circle around the observatory in the middle, that way making it look like a big eye from outside. Parts of the metal casing had been replaced by windows of different shapes and sizes, some of them could be spotted through the stacks of equipment, supplies and machinery that filled most of the floor-space.

Jonas first impression of the living-section was that it was just as dense and cramped as the storage room. Despite the stations modest population of only thirty people, there was always a lot of big equipment that one needed in order to make life in space bearable, and right now outpost 32 was simply getting too small. Recyclers for water, atmosphere and biological waste, power plant, food synthesizers, kitchen equipment, washing-machines and tumble-dryers, control-panels, computer core, waste-disposal, sub-space decoders, screens and entertainment systems and exercise machines – these were just a few of the commodities a modern space-station required, and on top of that came scientific equipment and spare-parts for the observatory and Ioannis laboratory. There was very little floor-space, so to compensate Ioannis and his crew kept it extremely tidy. There were no superfluous gadgets lying around, no unwashed plates or cups left at the tables, no dust-bunnies in the corners.

"When we first moved in here I couldn't imagine us filling up all this space. Look at us now! We are drowning in our own tools!" Ioannis screamed in frustration.

Jonas didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing.

"Up to last month we were doing okay, but then starfleet sent us out very own doctor - Everyone must have them these days" Ioannis elaborated.

"So you had to make room for a sickbay?" Jonas asked.

"Yeah" Ioannis answered sullenly.

"I for one kind of like the new regulation. Its good to have a doctor around when you are so far away from civilization" Jonas argued.

Ioannis said no more before the tram stopped. When stagnant he stepped forward in order to open the manual door. The rusty hinge squeaked as it swung outwards, revealing the mess hall at the other side. It's tables and chairs were packed densely together beside the sideboard and cupboard that accompanied the food synthesizer. The walls that boxed the whole thing in was as white as the walls of the Enterprise, but here at the outpost they had granted themselves the liberty of hanging up some posters. It was a mix of movie-posters and rock-bands, both old classics and newer things.

"People, meet Jonas McDonald. Jonas McDonald, meet the people"

Ioannis said, letting the odd gang that was present in the room introduce them selves. Starfleet had annexes in many systems across federation space, that way the the member-planets did not have to send their youth all the way to Earth in order to get them into starfleet. This was good for recruitment, but the down-side was that humans from Earth and its surrounding core-worlds met few aliens before they entered actual service. Jonas for example, had never seen so many aliens in a room before. He counted a Bolian, a Denobulian, and a green skinned Orion girl, something that was quite surprising considering their indifferent stance regarding the federation.

"Hey there, I'm Zin Vindus" The Bolian said.

He was completely bald, as were all Bolian men. A vertical ridge went across his blue face, splitting it into two halves. Jonas told his name while smiling, his pink hand met the blue hand of the Bolian. He had a soft, warm handshake that seemed to radiate heat.

"Fessex Oblanum" The Denobulan said when the Bolian had let go of his hand.

The Denobulan had a stiff, hectic smile that Jonas was uncertain how he should interpret. Another thing he was uncertain about was how he should remember these strange new names. One possible technique would be to link them to the alien traits in their faces. The Denobulan for example, had prominent facial ridges that started at both sides of the forehead, growing bigger as they ran down over the cheekbones. He also had an enlarged brow-ridge under a high receding hairline, a vertical crevice in the center of the forehead, and a ridged chin. Kind of lizard-like, but lizard didn't rime with "Fessex" or "Oblanum" and "Zin Vindus" didn't rime with blue skin or vertical ridge either. Well well, at least both of them seemed like nice people, so it was unlikely that they would smash his head in for forgetting their names a couple of times.

"Oriana Minea"The Orion girl said.

That should be easy to remember, for she was quite small, and Oriana rimed with Orion. "Oriana Minea" - "Orion mini". She had black half-curled hair, black lips and black makeup around her eyes, unless it was as natural as her green skin that was - difficult to know really.

"So you Orions have joined the federation, have you?" Jonas asked her.

"We are just snooping around really. We might join if we like your academy" She answered swiftly.

The Orions were in general known as peaceful people, even though relations with the federation had been problematic at times. During later years the federation had expanded greatly, acquiring new member-systems that now completely surrounded Orion territory.

"So how do you like us so far?" Jonas asked.

"Your educational facilities are unnecessary slow, your knowledge and ways of thinking and doing are different from ours" She answered.

The strictness of her voice revealed that she was less then impressed by the academy. Jonas had worked like a dog to get through, so he was kind of happy about its slowness. Either Oriana was a genius, or she was bluffing in a attempt to look smarter than she really was.

There were some humans present as well, boring and studious types who analyzed images taken by the central telescope. It turned out that Oriana had the job of taking them. Outpost 32 circled a young star that was about to form planets, and this was an event worth documenting and analyzing. Such events were always slow, it would take several thousand years more before actual planets could be distinguished from the rings of gas that circled the star. There where however, areas of higher mass-density than other, and based on this information, Oriana could point out some places where planetary formation would take place in the future. If their calculations were correct this would become a system of seven planets, two of them M-class. M-class meant that their size, temperature and atmosphere would be suitable for life, and as such would have a high probability of evolving advanced lifeforms a few billion years after cool-down and stabilization. When done explaining her scientific project on board, Oriana showed Jonas the rest of the station, ending at his living quarter.

The bed was as hard as the walls were white, just as his hideout in the Enterprise had been. The bedside table was a white box with a adjustable and highly flexible lamp built into it, classic starfleet design that as well. Jonas found his weekly ration of food-slots in the drawer. These gray cards all had photos of tasty meals and beverages glued to them, if inserted into a food synthesizer it would take the card and give a meal or beverage similar to the image in return. Jonas looked through the cards and picked out two that he thought would make a good combination: chocolate cake and citrus-tea. He put the cards in his pocket and walked towards the door. It's sensors was set to detect the presence of the identity-card in his suit, so it automatically opened to let him through. The tram could be called by the push of a button, but the problem was that it was only one of them circling the entire station. This was probably the reason for why a post-it note with a message was glued to the metal surface under it. "Cadets walk unless emergency" it said. Jonas was hungry, but not so hungry that he could call it an emergency, not by a long shot.

So Jonas backed away from the tram, returning to the corridor that cut through the quarters of the lower-ranking employees. A wall and fire-door separated this module from the one where the higher ranking officers dwelled. This place contained only two quarters, one at each side of the corridor. Ioannis Demetriou at the right, Oriana Minia at the left. When they met she had forgotten to tell him her rank, but the stripes on her uniform had given it away. Thinking about it, she probably had a lot in common with Spock at Enterprise. They had both gone straight into entered senior-positions within starfleet after the academy, and they were both aliens. Jonas was a bit uncertain about what Spock's actual function at the starfleet academy had been, but he had been very active in the student press, lectures and the organization of the academy while simultaneously attending his studies. Spock had enrolled the same year as Jonas, but unlike him he he had become quite a celebrity during his time there.

Vulcan philosophy preached logic and restraint as the foundation of anything valuable, and as such emotions were held in disregard. This made them very efficient people, but biology and genes also had a lot to do with it. Vulcans were few in numbers, they contributed with advanced technology, and they lacked the expansionist ambitions that made territorial quarrels so commonplace even within federation space. This was a perfect match with the ideals and styles of the united federation of planets, a organization that they had participated in from its foundation. Ordinary people were skeptical to Vulcan influence, but the politicians and academic elite loved them. Jonas himself had no strong opinions on the matter. He figured that there were hundreds of species among the federation members that were even less sympathetic than Vulcans, species that would fit much better as punching-bags if people wanted to go all xenophobic. Vulcans contributed a lot to the federation, but their arrogance, and their cold, impersonal behavior had on several occasions turned the public against them.

Since Oriana was at outpost 32 rather than the Enterprise, she was probably not as smart as Spock, or perhaps it was just that she preferred watching planets as they took shape over exploring them when they had turned solid and stable.

"Spock, isn't he into computer programming?" Oriana asked when Jonas had told her about his encounter with him aboard the Enterprise.

She had sat down beside him with a cup of tea and a peace of chocolate cake of her own.

"Might be, right now he's a science officer at the Enterprise for her five year mission"

"That's pretty impressive" Oriana agreed.

With the subject of Spock finished, Jonas could think of nothing more to say. He had absolutely nothing to contribute with at her field of expertise. Speaking of which - had she ever asked him what it was he was into?

"I'm a pilot by the way" He said.

"F-class?" Oriana asked between two bites of cake.

"Mostly, but we all take some basic knowledge about bigger ships as well"

"Did you apply for the command-track?" She wondered.

Jonas detected a spark of interest in her dark eyes. The green skin made them stand out in a way, very sexy.

"Nah, too violent for me. It's all about photon torpedoes, phasers and combat tactics - it seems counterproductive"

Jonas replied, giving the hippie-style explanation rather than the real thing. The problem with the command-track was that it was filled with idiots. While smart and resourceful, they were never the less dominated by aggressive people with Napoleon-complexes - that was at least Jonas impression of the faculty.

"But ain't F-class a bit small and boring?" Oriana asked.

"Definitely, but we learn a lot more than just driving them. Once you are licensed to drive a F-class you can easily fit into a lot of other jobs at any spaceship"

While Jonas had been talking, base-commander Ioannis had arrived at their table. When Jonas turned his head towards him he was leaning over it, apparently interested in the conversation.

"Ensign McDonald, I have a job for you" He said.

"Already?"

"This is no holiday camp. Follow me!" He barked out with strict authority.

Five minutes later Jonas found himself sitting at the opposite side of Ioannis office-desk. The problem concerning floor-space had already been explained, now they were moving towards a solution.

"I'm sending you out on a mining-operation" Ioannis said while searching for a file on his small laptop. Jonas prayed to god that it would not be a long trip. Enterprise had been pretty dull and lonely, to be alone in a F-class shuttle on a long journey would be even worse.

"Here"

Ioannis rotated the laptop around so that Jonas could see the image he had brought up on the screen. It was a small and dark planet, light colors on a hard and frozen surface.

"This is the outermost planet in the Nibulus-system" He informed.

"Wouldn't it have been easier to make the Enterprise bring with it a new module from Earth before passing by?" Jonas asked.

"Those folks are filled to the brink, according to the plan made by starfleet command they will go two years without new supplies" Ioannis answered while leaning back in his chair. A distant nebula in pink and yellow glowed through the window at the left side of the room. The light was reflected off Ioannis glasses, making it look as if a dense cloud of luminous gas had been captured inside them.

"Wow, that will be a new record" Jonas stated.

"Indeed"

"Is this the planet formation that you are studying?" Jonas asked while pointing towards the window.

"No no, its above us, much closer. To bright to have windows in that direction"

Returning to the task at hand, the job seemed easy enough. Jonas would take a shuttle straight into the neutral zone between the Klingon empire and federation space. Once there he would drill into a suitable iron-vein and fill the storage-room with ore. The outpost had the equipment needed to mold a new module out of the ore, that way giving the station some much needed extra space.

"What about radiation shielding?" Jonas wondered.

Pure iron would have to be very thick in order to block it out, additional materials where needed. Starfleet had invented a huge array of light radiation-blockers during its existence, but these were hard to make on a small station such as this one.

"I'm afraid lead will have to do, our scanning-probe detected deposits of that as well"

Ioannis had figured out all the technical details before Jonas arrival, so there was not really much to do except saying "yes sir" and go fetch his bag.

As they walked towards the shuttlebay, Ioannis explained that the odd looking craft parked there actually was two F-class shuttles wielded together. A new hull-section had been added below the first one, and this second hull-section had been wielded in place upside-down so that its slanted front wall ended in a pointed angle at the middle, where the other started. The row of impulse-engines that usually ran from side to side at the hind wall had been removed from the bottom hull, that way liberating a lot of interior space. Jonas figured that acceleration would be rather sluggish if he filled all this idle room with heavy metals, but luckily warp would remain unaffected as this system manipulated space itself rather than providing a physical push.

The shuttle was programmed to accept his ID-card, so it opened automatically when he got close enough. - just like the door to his quarter. The lights were automatic as well, they lit up the moment he crossed the doorsill, revealing the featureless interior of the bottom container. All panels and chairs were removed, only the holes for the screws and bolts that had once kept them in place remained. Ioannis had installed a row of metal steps into the wall across the entrance. The steps would have been pointless had he not carved out a rectangular opening in the plating that separated the two storeys from each other.

Since it had not been stripped of its impulse engines and control consoles, the second storey seemed more cramped than the one below. The living space at the back was equipped with food synthesizer, as well as a entertainment screen and the obligatory stress-less chair that usually accompanied it. Jonas eyes were then drawn to the big white box by the inner wall, opposite end of the cockpit-dashboard.

"Its a freezer, it contains all the juices needed for the synthesizer" Ioannis explained.

The food synthesizers built food on a molecular level, but in order to do so it needed some basic raw materials like protein, carbohydrates, water and vitamins. These were placed in different containers inside the freezer, ready to replenish the tanks within the food synthesizer as it ran dry. The system was less space-consuming than it would be to bring normal food, and it was also very time-efficient. Jonas was not all that certain about the taste though, there were many tastes, and even some textures and consistencies that it was incapable of mimicking accurately.

"It's good." Jonas said while giving a approving nod towards Ioannis, who was on his way up the ladder. This was as much as he could ask for according to starfleet regulations, at least for short trips like this one. The walls and ceilings might start to cave in on him after a few days in space, but he would manage.

"It might feel a bit boxy, but we starfleet-people have to get used to that sooner or later, eh?" Ioannis said, expressing the very words Jonas was thinking.

"Definitely" He agreed.

"Good, I'll be right back. There is still some equipment to beam aboard"

Ioannis climbed down the ladder, leaving Jonas alone for the time being. He walked over to the console and sat down by the chair beside it. The screen was dead and dark before he pushed in the button that lit it up. Twenty-third century pilot consoles did not have driving-wheels, pedals or control-sticks. The computer took care of the smaller calibrations that such tools were made for, but it could not think very much on its own, so the human element was still required. The F-class console was basically a compressed and simplified version of the various work-stations that could be found on bigger ships. The number of buttons, screens and options had been drastically reduced in order to make it possible for two persons to operate it, or one in this case. The chair for the co-pilot at his left side would be empty for this voyage, but the console was within reach if he leaned over.

Jonas had just started the obligatory system-check when a big rectangular box with mining-equipment beamed aboard behind him, filling up most of the idle floor-space. Jonas opened the lid and took a superficial glance at it while picking up his communicator to call Ioannis with the other hand. The box contained one spacesuit, one phaser-drill, a disruptor-pistol, a portable tractor-beam emitter, a particle-teleporter, and off course a huge energy-cell to fuel it all.

"All good here, I think I'm ready to go" He said when the connection was established.

"I'm on my way back to the shuttle-bay, stand by for exit-procedure"

Jonas followed Ioannis movement with the outer hull camera as he walked back into the shuttlebay, heading towards the only console in the room. It was positioned within an airtight glass-box, or more precisely a box of transparent aluminum, the material that had taken over the functions of ordinary glass in most starfleet installations. Jonas had a row of three windows in this super-strong material in front and above him. This was called "the forward viewpoint" in the technical manuals, and it could be useful during certain types of system-failures. Unfortunately it was positioned a bit to high up on the wall, so for the time being he could not see anything but the roof of the hall unless he rose from his seat.

Ioannis closed the door to his glass-cage and went up to the console.

"Activating atmospheric force-field" He informed while pushing some buttons.

The force field would keep the atmosphere in place while the shuttle-doors opened, or at least most of it. Creating a force-field tight enough to keep the air inside while allowing solid objects to push through had taken some of the best heads in starfleet several years to figure out. The system was still far away from perfection, small amounts of air escaped whenever a shuttle left the bay area.

"Opening outer gate" Ioannis continued, still bent over the console.

Jonas turned the camera around to watch as the gate opened. The wall that normally separated the shuttlebay from the vacuum of space moved up and away, a cluster of twinkling stars greeted him at the other side.

"Turning of flight-deck gravity plating"

Jonas was starting to get tired of hearing Ioannis speak. These step-by-step operations where it was obligatory to explain everything one did vocally, could be extremely tiresome.

Jonas had not yet activated the interior gravity of the shuttle so when the flight-deck floor lost it's grip he became weightless as well. His body started drifting up and out of the chair, this was a cue for him to activate the interior life-support systems. Gravity returned, pulling him gently down while the atmosphere recycler started it's low hum.

"Activating tractor-beam" Ioannis said.

This was the final step of the procedure. Once he was out and gone it would have to be repeated the other way around, but luckily protocol did not compel him to stick around and listen to Ioannis explaining it. The funnel-shaped green beam started from a point at the ceiling, directly above the shuttle. Without gravity to compete with, it took only a minimal effort to pull the shuttle up from the floor. A new push of green fired from a different angle sent it sailing towards the exit.

"See you in a couple of days!" Ioannis said.

"Does this shuttle have a name by the way?" Jonas wondered while floating through the open gate.

"I named it Donatello"

"Okay, see you soon"

Jonas closed his communicator and put it back in his pocket. " Now it's just you and me Donatello" he said to himself before he got started on the console. He had a course to plot, and a planet to visit, a "strange new world to explore" as a starfleet recruitment campaign might have expressed it. The Nibulus system was behind him, at the opposite side of the station. When he had typed the destination into the console, the computer automatically turned him about and put Donatello in the correct angle. The course suggested by the computer would take him pretty close to BY-36 - the subject of Oriana's studies, so close in fact, that its gravity would pull him into a slight curve despite him holding a speed of half impulse, half the speed of light.

Jonas had no objections against this plan, in fact he rather liked it. The trajectory would keep him above the rings of heated gas and mass, and the distance to the star itself would remain within acceptable parameters throughout the whole fly-by. According to Oriana, thousands of planetesimals had already formed, and some of those would grow into protoplanets as time passed. Outpost 32 orbited the star at the very edge of it's gravitation well, about ten hours away at the speed of light. That was a perfect viewpoint for the scanner-array and telescope that was the main function of the station, and if by any chance closer scrutiny was needed they could rely on Donatello and Jonas to get them there.

"Well, better get going" Jonas thought as he pushed the button that ignited the impulse-engines. High-pitched humming and powerful vibrations instantly followed, this was to be expected when applying such massive forces on such a small vessel. When the right speed had been established, the engines shut them selves down.

The star-system and its brilliant rings shone towards him in a thousand different colors, and the view would only get better as it grew bigger and more luminous on his screen. This was space at it's very best, warp would only serve to throw him into the same old scenery of black void and white spots that dominated elsewhere.


	7. Chapter 7: Dead stop

K`hmary was no longer visible through the only view-port of the Yumaar explorer. The sun had gotten small and tame, but radio and video-messages still came through with impressive sharpness. Today's headline back home was "Unrest in the Ascelon region". Ascelon was a densely populated area east of the capital, mostly known for it's heavy industry. In later years it had also been the battleground for a series of clashes between workers and police. Yumaar had never really bothered to look into the reasons behind all this violence, space was so much more fascinating than the grim world of politics. The problem was that he would one day take over the throne, and this day was starting to get uncomfortably close.

"Those idiots wants popular representation" D`Jumo said over dinner, his voice had a touch of aggression in it.

"That's pretty dumb. I thought everyone was happy with the technocrats and nobles council" Yumaar answered.

"Boring!" Tux screamed while jamming his knife into his peace of Jalavi-chicken.

"Feel free to switch subject" Sappi suggested.

For Yumaar, stuff like this would be a part of his job in the future - boring or not. He found it interesting to see though, how little interest his bridge-officers took in it.

"We should consider to give them some symbolic token of power. A rubber-stamp advisory parliament or something" Cillion shoot in while Tux searched his brain for a better theme to circle.

"Weapons test" He said after some seconds of silence, ignoring Cillion's idea.

Yumaar was however not ready to let it slip just yet:

"Not a good idea. The whole concept is flawed, and should not be flirted with" He said to Cillion.

"Weapons test? Do we have something to fire at?" Loup wondered, pursuing the topic Tux had embarked upon. Her thin eyebrows lifted at the prospect of some action on the bridge. The consoles had been left untouched for almost a week now, no blinking lights, no beeps or alarms.

"Yepp. Weapons-test. We are passing Ursula-gray tomorrow, and ground control wants us to blow it to peaces" Tux explained delightfully.

"That big comet that passes by every fifty year or so?" Yumaar asked.

Cillion had not managed to come up with any kind of counter-argument on the democracy-debate, so Yumaar jumped aboard the parallel discussion instead.

"Indeed" Tux confirmed.

Yumaar found it odd that they should blow up a object of such cultural importance. For the last five hundred years or so, people had gathered in millions to watch when it passed. The event had gotten more and more spectacular for each flyby, partly because more and more people participated in the event and the following festivities, partly because Ursula-gray got closer and closer, bigger and brighter each time.

"Point is that it will fall down on us in two or three more orbits, better to finish it of now than later"

Tux replied after Yumaar had aired his concerns over the festivities, and how they would be responsible for ending them. There were however, another possibility:

"Why not just change it's trajectory instead?" He asked.

"The size makes it easier to blow it up than it would be to change it's direction"

The numbers and calculations spoke for them selves, so after dinner they all gathered at the bridge to take a better look at their target. Since space lacked gravity and atmosphere, everything was within range as long as one knew its exact position, speed and heading. Cillion was in charge of the weapons-console, and therefore he would get the honor of marking the asteroid for destruction. The computer would do the math, so Cillion's task was primarily to push the trigger when it had finished. The projectile fired would accelerate until its fuel-tanks were empty, and from there it would continue in a straight line until it hit something that caused it to explode. In the unlikely event that it missed it's target this would most probably be a star or planet hundreds, if not thousands of light-years away.

"On screen" Tux said.

As the operator of the communication panel, it was his job to zoom in on the celestial bodies of Yumaar's choice and put them up on the main screen. Even at max zoom and minimal resolution, the grainy image remained dominated by stars and the black void of space. Ursula-gray had a diameter of almost a hundred kilometer, so it was distance rather than size that made the image so crappy.

"How long until we can get a good view of her?" Yumaar wondered.

"Around ten hours at current speed" Tux answered.

"How long will it take before impact if we fire now?" Yumaar inquired further. He was uncertain if he should direct this question towards his weapons or navigational operator, so in order to conceal his ignorance he chose to keep his eyes fixed on the blob of over-sized, dirt-colored pixels up on the main monitor. Cillion passed the question over to the computer, his hands danced over the beeping console.

"That should be about seven hours"

He informed after some seconds of intense work.

"I am not going to get up six in the morning to see a dirty snowball explode!" Sappi protested loudly. She had done her math too, arriving at an absolute conclusion.

"If we can postpone this event until dinnertime tomorrow, I'm all for it" Yumaar said.

"I can set the time of launch now if you want" Cillion offered.

"Please do, and make the computer send a vocal warning over the com-link system twenty minutes before impact" Yumaar ordered.

"Yes sir"

With this matter successfully settled, Yumaar felt a strong desire to pursue more enjoyable activities.

"Sappi, it's your turn to play katron against me!"

He rose from his command-chair while speaking, heading towards the ladder. This time he was absolutely certain that he was not up for guard-duty, he had checked the billboard on his way up.

"I'll be right with you" She answered.

* * *

><p>Three hours later, Yumaar was lying in bed, trying to figure out what to do next. He was in no mood for another game of katron, he had already done his daily jog, he was not hungry, and neither was he up for guard-duty. The last time he had had idle time on his hand he had re-read the instructions on everything they were supposed to do on Snowball once they got there. Establishing orbit and landing seemed pretty straight forward - Tux would take care of all that - but the scientific experiments required some extra scrutiny. According to the plan that ground control had made for them, they were to spend a lot of time driving around on the surface. The scientists back home wanted ice from different locations, and they also wanted gas-measurements and rock from a volcano close to the landing-site. Each piece of material was to put in its own freezer-box, and this box was to be set to the same temperature and pressure it had been found in, the point being that it remained in it's original form and shape until it reached K`hmary. The plan that the scientists had made was very rigid. Yumaar had thought about this and come to the conclusion that the most important thing to figure out about their instructions was the general idea of what they wanted. Things might get different from what they had expected when down on the surface, a more flexible approach would come in handy and make them less vulnerable. Such thoughts had flied through his head for the last half hour or so. Now he was finally getting tired of staring at the white ceiling, so he rolled out of bed and went over to his desk instead. Pen, paper, writing:<p>

_1) The scientists wants a little taste of what kinds of substances that the planet it made of. Take samples of different kinds of surface-textures you find, as well as atmospheric tests close and far away from the Volcano._

_2) Remember to plot in where it is taken from, and get right pressure and temperature on the box._

_3) Only one thing in each box_

This was a short summary of a hundred page long report. If the weather was nice and he was in a good mood he might even follow it to the letter. The problem was that the foundation that it was built upon had some serious cracks. Snowball's only visitor so far had been a primitive satellite from the early days of space-exploration. That was almost a century ago, so keeping in mind that Snowball was very geologically active, drastic changes could have occurred since then. Yumaar actually kind of liked the thought of having to find a new place to land. It would set them off track, force them to think for them selves.

He stuck the note he had written to the billboard above his desk and walked out of the room. Out in the corridor the illuminating skirtings by his feet and head were shining brightly yellow, meaning that it was still midday. Had he been home at the royal castle the light would be accompanied by the pleasant sounds of bird-twitter, but he was not, and adding such a feature felt a little over-the-top. If he had wanted everything to be as it was at home he would have stayed home, he would not have bothered to go hundreds of millions of kilometers into space so that he could pretend to be home. When he had reached the spiral-stairway at the end of the corridor, he was still undecided regarding were it was he wanted to go. Perhaps he should hang out with Cillion up at the bridge? Or should he go downstairs to check if anything exiting was happening in the move-room or the dining-hall? Thinking about it, Yumaar got a even better and much more radical idea. Now was a perfect time to do something that he had neglected so far on his journey: he would go past the dining-hall and take a look at the servants quarters. After all, the servants did make up half of the crew, so one might argue that they deserved a bit more of the captain's attention than what they had received so far.

The thought of visiting a brand new place on his ship made Yumaar eager and happy, so he rushed down the stairway as fast as his legs could carry him.

"Where are you going?" D`Jumo asked when he entered the dining-hall.

He was having breakfast, raw thulian eggs with sweet pansha-gel - a dish usually reserved for desserts - accompanied by a glass of water. Yumaar found the combination odd, but he was in no mood to discuss food.

"I thought I might say hello to the servants, tag along if you want"

D`Jumo's right eyebrow lifted a bit, he seemed baffled by the idea.

"Hm. Could be interesting, I'll be right with you, just let me finish my lunch."

Yumaar sat down on the opposite end to watch him eat. There were not that many bites left on his plate, he would be done in a minute or two. While D`Jumo struggled to get the food down, Yumaar studied the oil-painting behind him. He had not yet found the time to put the paintings who decorated the walls of the dining-hall under closer scrutiny, but he noticed that this one was quite beautiful. It represented mount Gale, the tallest mountain in the Northern kingdom and the second tallest on K`hmary. Mount Gale was so tall that it stuck up above the thick layer of clouds that lay wrapped as a protective shield around the planet. Thus the unshielded mountaintop was bathed in high-intensity sunlight during daytime. Nothing could live under such harsh conditions, so the rock was gray and naked, completely cleansed of even simple lifeforms like moss and lichen. The plateau on the top was not only elevated above the clouds, but also above all but the thinnest gases in the atmosphere. The strong storms that howled across the steep mountainside further down lost their strength at this altitude. Even though the wind-speed was remarkably high, there was simply not enough atmosphere left to push or pull anything around. In modern times an elevator had been built up to the science-station and training-camp on top. King Yumaar - Shyyrom's predecessor and prince Yumaar's grandfather - had built it in order to test spacesuits and the long-term effects of radiation. The large sun was setting behind the complex, turning the cloud layer behind the long and dark mountainside blood-red. Since the painting was dominated by shades of dark red and black it became very gloomy. Never the less it was very esthetically pleasing due to it's clear lines and good composition.

"Let's go" D`jumo said while shoving his plate aside in a sudden movement.

He looked at Yumaar while drying his mouth with the napkin. Yumaar got up from his chair, D`Jumo followed. The servants quarter was just behind the fire-door, filling the rooms at both side at of the corridor. Yumaar had only gone through this module a few times, so he wasn't completely sure about which door to enter. Left or right? If he remembered the technical blueprints correctly, one lead to the laundry while the other went into their sleeping bunks and living-space. The situation was resolved when Cillion's servant came rushing out the right door with a huge basket of fruits between his hands. He was probably heading for the bridge where Cillion was currently doing guard-duty.

"My lord" The servant said, bowing gently in Yumaar's direction.

The difficult task of showing the proper respect while at the same time avoid the loss of fruit, ended in failure. A cluster of doley-berries tipped over the edge of the overfilled basket and fell to the ground with a squashy sound.

"Hmm" Yumaar said while focusing on one of the remaining doley-clusters.

His eyes were drawn to their healthy looking greenness, a vibrant color that bore promises of sweet and juicy fruit-meat inside. His hand followed shortly thereafter, easening the burdened servant a little more.

"My lord" The servant repeated, the phrase was immediately followed by another gentle bow.

Yumaar picked one of the doley-berries of the bunch he had taken, and put it in his mouth - Very good indeed, too bad that the storage-bay was almost out of them. Unless restrictions were implemented their voyage home would be 100% doley-free. Yumaar chewed it slowly, enjoying every second of it. He tried to give one to D`Jumo, but he refused the offer.

"Just ate" He reminded him.

The metal door had closed itself behind the servant with the fruit, Yumaar knocked carefully before he opened and stepped over the sill. The room he had entered was sparsely equipped. Six bunks was built into the wall at the left wall, to rows with three on top of each other. The other end contained a table and some chairs. Everything was made out of some light-weight metal, probably aluminum. The floor and wall was as white as they were in the command-section where he usually dwelled. Four out of six servants was present at the moment, including his own servant Kesh. They were all dressed in drab hooded sweaters in thin wool, the traditional robes for servants in the northern kingdom. Upon entry, Kesh had been lying in her bunk, reading something on her portable flat-screen. These wonders could be plugged into small holes built into the walls of every room in the ship, holes that were connected to the main databank where thousands of books and magazines were stored. Now she put the flat-screen down on the mattress and climbed down the small ladder that was bolted to the wall between the two rows of bunks. Kesh curtsied, a traditional gesture that involved a slight bending of the knees while dropping ones head forward - the female equivalent of a bow.

"What brings you to our humble chamber my lord?" She asked.

"Oh, just thought I might take a look around" Yumaar answered casually.

"Would you fancy a guided tour?" She wondered.

"I'd love to" Yumaar answered, delighted by the excellent proposal.

Kesh started her new task by showing them their personal kitchen and laundry. This place could not be reached from the corridor as it laid beyond the combined dormitory and dining-room where they had first entered. The kitchen was a small and narrow room that ran parallel with the hull. It would have been possible to build a window above the kitchen sink, stove, microwave oven and the other types of machinery that was lined up against the white wall. In fact such a window would have made the kitchen incredibly cool, one huge window from where one could enjoy space while stirring around in soup, mixing ingredients and frying beef. Yumaar aired this idea to D`Jumo, who had some interesting thoughts on the subject:

"Yes, but we need a more solid kind of transparent material. The only window we have right now is the peace of glass facing the aft part of the ship. This is because the meeting room at the pressurized side is the least important room on the ship, and because this specific spot is the least likely to be hit by space-dust or gravel. With a better material or a proper energy-shield we could put windows all over the ship"

While he was talking, Kesh lead them across the corridor, through the door at the opposite side.

"This is the laundry" She said.

The dirty clothes were hand-washed in one out of the medium-sized barrels who stood scattered around the floor, and then put up to dry on the strings that went across the room. Two big ducts that ended in oppositely revolving fans made sure the room stayed dry, no matter how much wet clothing they hung up. A system hidden behind the ceiling sucked the moist out of the air, and heated it up before it was pumped out of the other vent. The system was primitive, specially for a spaceship. Washing-machines and tumble-dryers had never really gotten popular among the K`hmynians, who believed in owning few, but high-quality garnets, and as such it was important not to mistreat and deform them by putting them into such brutal machines. In space it was widely used never the less, as hand-washing and air-drying relied on gravity to function. Had it not been for Khark's disloyal merchant and the gravity-plating he had sold them, the luxury of old-school laundry had been impossible

At this point Kesh had only one room left to show, but unfortunately her tour was cut short by the alarm. The artificial howling and red-blinking lights warned them that something very serious was going on. In such situations the servants were to sit down in the chairs around their dinner table and buckle up, while the officers should make haste towards the bridge. D`Jumo and Yumaar split ways with Kesh out in the corridor, heading back into to the dining-hall of the nobles. During red alert the fire-door automatically closed, so Yumaar had to type in a code to open it.

"I wonder what's going on" D`Jumo said in the idle moment he got while Yumaar was busy with the code.

"Must be serious" Yumaar answered dryly.

The situations that trigger red-alert were numerous, and for the time being none of them could be ruled out. A natural reaction under such circumstances might be to call Cillion on guard-duty and ask him, but the regulations forbade it due to the strong possibility of the bridge having more pressing concerns to deal with. Other than the annoying sound and red-blinking light, there were no signs of disaster. The ship did not shake or tremble, the lights did not flicker, and there were no noticeable pressure-drops. Nothing about this situation changed during the forty-five seconds it took Yumaar and D`Jumo to reach the bridge. They had been furthest away to begin with, so they were the last people up. The four others were at their correct posts, behind the consoles they were trained to operate.

"What's up?" Yumaar wondered as he climbed up the ladder.

Nobody were feeding any new orders to the computer, their hands rested idly against the edge of their panels and armrests.

"Alien attack!" Cillion screamed through the alarm.

The surprising answer made Yumaar lift an eyebrow. Even though they might all die, he found it funny that they would be killed by the incident that ground control found most unlikely. Hell, those folks had had so much fun ridiculing his anti-alien gun that even Yumaar had laughed at their jokes. The memories caused his lips to curve into a wry smile

"Aha" Yumaar said to himself while walking over to the command-chair.

The forward monitor showed nothing but stars. Space seemed as empty as usual, and the numbers at the bottom right informed him that course and speed remained stable. Yumaar was full of questions, but he waited until D`Jumo had seated himself behind his life-support console before indulging his curiosity.

"So where are the aliens?" He asked in a loud but controlled tune of voice. The alarm was still running, making communication difficult.

"I'm putting them up on the screen now" Tux screamed back at him.

The round ship that appeared was well known to everyone in the crew. It was none other than the "Sea of Opportunity" - Khark's ship. Yumaar had never seen this ship fire it's weapons, but he figured that they had little chance against its twin cannons. The two large and mean looking guns were sticking out at both ends of the horseshoe that curved outwards from behind the odd-looking bridge-head. He found it very hard to believe that Khark would suddenly turn on him like this, but he had to believe his crew and base his actions on what they told him.

"Can we establish communication?" He asked.

"We already have, Khark wants us to take a shot at him" Tux informed.

"That's very... Hm, noble of him."

This meant that the situation was stable, so the alarm could be turned off for the time being. Thoughts turned into words, who turned into action - the tormenting haze of sound and flashing lights lifted

"That was better, but tell the servants to stay put"

He ordered as soon as the room silenced. With the alarm of it got easier to think, that damn thing continued to ring in Yumaar's ear even after it was turned of - in his opinion the operators had set its volume way to high. Yumaar was still pretty calm, mostly because he failed to grasp and relate to the absurd reality of what his crew was telling him, much less turn it into an emotional response.

"Is the cannon ready?" Yumaar asked Cillion while Sappi repeated his message to the servants quarter. Her voice was very tense, Yumaar worried that she might break apart again, like she had done during that asteroid-shower a week earlier.

"Ready and waiting" Cillion confirmed.

Yumaar was not really planning to use it, he hoped this would turn out to be some kind of misunderstanding that they could resolve through peaceful and civilized dialog. A brief chat would make it all go away, perhaps they could even get a tour inside Khark's ship? Yumaar was dying to see the interior of such an advanced starship, but Khark had so far refused his request.

"I want to reestablish contact with Khark" Yumaar ordered.

When the big-eared Ferengi appeared on the screen, Yumaar did not like the look on his face. It was the look of a man with a scheme. He was planning something evil, and it was undoubtedly going to happen at their expense. Yumaar had never seen that look before, so far in their relationship he had believed wholeheartedly that Khark was a lovingly and well-meaning businessman. Now he got the creepy feeling that he had walked into a trap.

"Hello again" Yumaar said cautiously.

"I'm sorry, but I'm can't let you reach your destination" Khark said with a evil grin on his lips.

When he had finished talking, this grin widened considerably, revealing the sharp and chaotic jungle of densely packed teeth that usually stayed hidden beneath his lips. The Ferengi were carnivore, no doubt about that.

"May I remind you that we are armed and quite able to defend our selves" Yumaar answered, trying to sound as confident as possible.

"HA!" Khark screamed while throwing his head back in a contemptuous manner. None of his bridge-crew sat within the angle of the camera, but they could hear them join in on the laugh, as if the nuclear arsenal of the Yumaar explorer was just one big joke to them.

This made Yumaar furious - what right did some abject, sordid little trader have to mock the prince of the Northern kingdom? He would blow that lowly little scumbag and his ugly puke-green hulk to smithereens, and than he would put his bloody, depressurized and inflated head on a pole that he would erect as a trophy in the royal garden.

"This is no laughing matter monkey-face" Yummar said brusquely

His jaws tightened and his antennas laid them selves back against his scalp. His insult peeled off without the Ferengi taking any notable offense, the dirt-bag was simply to thick-skinned.

"I'll tell you what. You take your best shot at me, give me everything you got!" Khark challenged him.

This was the same message that Cillion had gotten before he turned on the red alert. There had been no mistake, no misunderstanding of any kind. Khark was overconfident though, of that Yumaar was certain. A nuclear detonation against his hull, or even close by would most probably rip his ship wide open, all the energy-shielding in the world would not help him against such devastating forces. Khark had not foreseen that Yumaar had brought a weapon of mass destruction with him, had he done so he would not have been so confident. Yumaar was tempted to get all haughty and throw another insult at him before fulfilling his request and kill him off, but first he needed to find out why all this was happening.

"Why do you want me to kill you?" He asked.

"I need my warp-drive back, I can sell it for twice the price at a hundred other worlds."

"All business then?" Yumaar asked, disappointed to find out that Khark was nothing but a simple thief and scoundrel. Had there at least been some kind of intergalactic diplomacy involved he might understand it, but to do such things for the simple pursuit of money was just disgusting. It would be good to get him out of the way.

"All business, the rules of acquisition you know" Khark confirmed, still with that ugly shark-smile smeared across his face.

"Get that thing out of my screen" Yumaar ordered with contempt in his voice.

He had never heard of these "rules of acquisition", and he was in no mood to find out now.

Khark disappeared again, replaced by the much calmer and more friendly looking stars.

"Can I have some target info please?" He asked.

"The alien vessel is drifting twenty-five thousand kilometers ahead of us, holding relative position" Cillion read of his console.

"Do we need to get closer before we can shoot?" Yumaar wondered.

He was a bit in the dark here, it would be difficult to know a good distance from a bad one with so little experience. Since this would be the first space-to-space battle ever with K`hmynians involved they would in fact write history at this spot - if they got home to tell their story that was.

"If we make a sudden acceleration before we fire our weapons we will increase the speed of the warheads, it is crucial that that Khark doesn't get the time he needs to take evasive action" Cillion opined.

"And how long will he have in our present situation?" Yumaar needed to know.

"Several minutes sir"

"Damn!" Yumaar hit his fist against his armrest."It's to slow!" He screamed in frustration.

This might very well be the reason behind Khark's confidence. Their lack of a proper beam-weapon meant that their warheads crawled through space like snails across the road. A ship equipped with the almost unreal efficiency of the Ferengian impulse-engines could jump a million kilometers away at a moments notice. They had to get closer, a lot closer.

"May I add that this ship in incapable of accelerating faster than our missiles" Tux shot in.

"So Cillion's plan won't work?" Yumaar asked.

It was not until now that the grave nature of their situation started to sink into Yumaar's brain. They risked being shredded to peaces by superheated phaser beams that would cut through their hull as if it was made of pansha-gel. This revelation instantly caused cold sweat to squeeze itself out of his pores, making him clammy and uncomfortable.

"No, it's not going to work".Tux said.

The bridge went silent. It was a gloomy and strained silence that they could only be broken through inventing some sort of miracle-plan that had a theoretical chance of saving them from the grim fate ahead.

What seemed like an eternity passed away before Loup opened her mouth to speak:

"What if we give him the drive? we can still curve around Sintorious and go home" She suggested.

Sintorious was the gas-giant which Snowball orbited. Making a landing here required a solid surplus of supplies and fuel. If they lost their warp-drive, they would have to dropp it. Yumaar thought about it for a moment, concluding that it was their best shot. The way he saw it, he had a better chance at making Khark accept this offer than he had at destroying his ship.

"Get Khark back on the screen" He ordered.

"If this is about money, you can have your warp-drive back" Yumaar proposed when the threatening reappeared. His mouth had gotten dry, and it felt like his throat was swelling. Thus his voice sounded a bit meeker than it usually did.

"Sorry, I can't do that old friend. I can't risk you people getting home and tell everybody what a horrible person I am."

"I see. Well, I can kill you if you like. Please stand by while I move into target range"

"Negative, according to Ferengi tradition, this is the proper dueling-distance"

Yumaar went silent as he realized that his last hope of survival had been flushed down the drain. If Khark would not allow him to move closer than this, then they had no fighting-chance what so ever. He sat paralyzed in his chair, unable to act or think.

"This is going to slow for me..." Khark said while drumming his fingers against the armrest of his chair. Yumaar realized that he was nothing more than a bump in the road to him, and now he was getting bored, eager to get on with business. A cold shiver went down his spine.

"Cut transmission and zoom in on target" He ordered when he had pulled himself together.

"Okay, here is the plan" Cillion said the moment Khark disappeared, this time replaced by a close-up of the ship he was sitting in.

"This better be good" Yumaar said while giving him a skeptical look.

A part of him wanted to scream, panic and run for the landing-shuttle. He could no longer see any good ways of getting out of this alive.

"We turn around, fire all our rockets, and then we make our escape while the ferengians are busy with their evasive manoeuvre"

"Sounds good to me" D`Jumo opined.

"Okay, make it happen" Yumaar said. - It sounded good to him as well.

"Wait! One problem" Tux protested.

"Ignored, make it happen" Yumaar knew exactly what it was he wanted to say.

As the head of navigation, Tux was worried that a premature deceleration would slow them down to much to make it all the way to Snowboard within acceptable timetable. It didn't matter, not in such grave danger as this. Angry about being disregarded, Tux made a grumpy sound while typing the new orders into his console.

"Turning warp off and rotating in three, two, one.."

The vertical rotation squeezed everyone into their chairs the same way that a fast Ferris wheel or a loop in a roller coaster would do. Upon feeling the extra gravitational pull, D`Jumo hit a button on his console, turning off the gravity-plating to compensate. When acceleration ended, a brief period of what felt like free fall followed. The rotation was cut half way around by another powerful burst from the guidance-rockets, this time in the opposite direction. Their bodies wanted to continue the previous movement, but luckily their flight towards the ceiling was repressed by the safety-belts that kept them strapped to their chairs. A loose plastic cup jumped out of its holder in someones armrest. It's drift continued all the way up to the ceiling, rotating so that dark bubbles of choory were scattered across the room. For some reason D`Jumo hesitated to turn gravity back on, so the now-empty cup did not come down again, but stayed afloat beneath the ceiling. The free floating bubbles of choory turned into dark spots where it merged with the walls.

"More work for the servants" Sappi whispered.

"Lets fire everything we have against various points in and around their hull-structure, four seconds delay between each missile" Yumaar ordered.

"On it" Cillion answered eagerly.

He figured that the missiles would be harder to shoot down if they held slightly different course rather than forming a single line. A slight delay would also be in order so that one successful detonation did not cause a chain-reaction that blew up the ones coming in behind. According to ground-control, four seconds was the absolute minimum.

"Engage warp drive on my order" Yumaar ordered Tux while Cillion was working, it took him only a few second to distribute hit-points across the hull of the enemy ship.

"Ready!" He said when done.

"Fire!"

The impressive acceleration taking place within the barrel of the gun created a massive recoil that put great strain on the ship. Guidance-rockets attached to the cannon itself created a counter-force that kept the ship from rolling around, but it still shook violently for every round launched. Exit-velocity for the missiles was about seven kilometers a second, increasing rapidly up to twenty-one once the plasma-engine was engaged. The exhaust-gas from those engines could be pretty destructive to the ship's hull if lit up too close, so a five second gap between launch and acceleration had been programmed into their flight-plan. The gun and it's ammunition was state-of-the-art technology back home, but it never the less felt pretty futile to fire it against a Ferengi battleship twenty five thousand kilometers away.

"Impact in..." Cillion started, undoubtedly planning on spelling out the eternity of time that it would take the missiles to reach their destination.

"Don't bother. Engage warp-drive and get us out of here"

"Yes sir" Tux answered.

"Should I start the propulsion-engine?" Loup wondered.

"Off course!" Yumaar shouted at her.

"The target is moving sir!" Sappi screamed from the other side. It was not really her job to report such happenings, but she was the first one to notice it. Up on the main monitor, the Sea of Opportunity was shifting angle, turning its belly against them. Then it disappeared in a flash of light, the camera failed to follow its rapid movement.

"Enemy relocated, still within radar-range" Tux informed. As navigator on board, he had the radar-array at his console - even though it would have been just as logical to give it to Cillion.

"On screen" Yumaar said.

The Sea of opportunity had reappeared at a position ten thousand kilometers away from the blast zone of the nuclear warheads. Even though they were equipped with guidance-rockets, it was highly unlikely that they would succeed in making such a steep curve at max speed. Cillion had to make an attempt never the less, Yumaar wanted to go down fighting.

"Enemy is firing sir!" Tux said while Cillion received his new instructions. Yumaar had kept his eyes fixed on the ship since it shifted position, so he didn't really need to be told. Sharp yellow lights flared up from it's twin guns, hurling dense particle-radiation towards them.

"Embrace for impact" Yumaar ordered, believing that they were about to be hit.

They were not. Instead the nuclear warheads blew up in rapid succession, producing trivial amounts of gas, light and radiation that laid itself as a white blanket between the camera and it's object. Each blast would have been big enough to completely obliterate a medium-sized city, which was why the kingdoms back home constantly threatened each other with them. It was odd to observe how completely useless they were when brought into another context. With the warp-field and propulsion-engine activated while turned away from the Ferengi ship, the gap between them increased with several kilometers a second. The expanding bubbles of radioactive gas would use at least half an hour to reach the them, so if they against all odds were still alive by then, they might notice it as a gentle breeze against the hull.

Two new phaser-beams rushed through space, the Yumaar explorer was given a gentle nudge as they carved through one fuel-tank each. Khark did not want to harm his precious warp-drive, so he had ordered his weapons operator to use the weakest setting. The beams burned through the wrapping with ease, but they were not strong enough to set of a violent chain-reaction within the fuel-tanks. Pressurized gas shoot out like volcano-eruptions from the open wounds in the metal surface, it was only a matter of minutes before they ran dry, and then they would be dead in the water - drifting through space with neither propulsion or power. Several systems detected the problem, red alert was automatically turned back on.

"What now?" D`Jumo screamed through the infernal noise.

Everyone else in the room were too scared to talk, so he got no answer. The bloodthirsty Ferengians were not happy yet, both phaser-banks continued after a brief pause, this time against their guidance-thrusters. Yumaar could not help admire the extreme elegance and efficiency of the weapon that was killing them. Their various systems were taken out with pin-point accuracy, not causing any unintended damage. The pair of thrusters beneath their feet and above their head were vaporized at a blink of an eye, not causing any hull-damage in the process.

It was a remarkable, astonishing and mind-blowing technological achievement. Being at the wrong side of the barrel, however - kind of sucked the joy out of it. The third volley took out their radar and communications-array, and then warp-drive went off-line. Tux hit the same button at his console several times, a bit harder for each attempt. He seemed frustrated, so Yumaar asked him what was going on.

"I cant find the warp-drive sir"

"That's because its missing. Khark just teleported it over to his ship" He explained.

"And turn of that damn alarm!" He added.

The ship returned to it's normal, calm atmosphere, but with some noticeable differences. Many of the consoles were blinking more vigorously than they used to do, and the subtle humming of the warp-drive was gone - stolen by that bastard Khark. With so much destruction going on in such a small time-frame, Yumaar started to count his blessings. The outer cameras were not broken, everyone was alive, and they were not leaking atmosphere. Did they have gravity? For the last couple of minutes the only thing keeping him down was the safety-belts of his chair, D`Jumo had not turned them back on after their last maneuver

"Are we alone again?" Yumaar asked.

"The camera lost track, so it's difficult to know without a radar" Tux explained.

"Hmm, gravity?"

"Missing" D`Jumo answered.

"All over the ship?"

"All of it" He confirmed.

"How far to Sintorious?"

Tux started searching his console, pushing a button every now and then.

"One month, two days and three hours from now" He then said.

"That's pretty close" Yumaar claimed, doing his best to sound optimistic.

"Yupp, but with warp it was only a week away"

"We need to consider abandoning ship and continue in the landing-vessel" Yumaar claimed

A brief conversation followed. Various factors that had to be weighed up against each other, benefits and drawbacks, different technical problems and solutions. The crew rapidly split up in two factions, Sappi and Loup preferred to stay at the Yumaar explorer, D`Jumo was uncertain, Tux and Cillion wanted to continue the trip from the landing-vessel. The extra engine-power provided by the landing-vessel would get them home faster, but it would be very, very crampy. Yumaar went silent early in the argument. Instead of talking himself he found it more worthwhile to retreat into his own thoughts and calculations for the time being. A plan was forming in his head, but he needed some time alone with the laptop in order to get the numbers straight.

"Whose on guard-duty?" He asked, breaking through the chatter.

"My shift just ended" Cillion replied while looking at his watch.

"Then it's my turn" Loup said.

"Okay, we break up for now. I will gather you here for another meeting in a few hours"

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, the Sea of opportunity headed out of the system at maximum warp. The gravity-plating and warp-drive had been successfully reclaimed, and Khark knew the perfect place to sell it.<p> 


	8. Chapter 8: Weekday

Three days of empty space, alone with himself and a bunch of old movies had turned Jonas brain into mash, or at least it felt that way. Life as a starfleet ensign was not always fun or interesting, he knew that when he signed in. Still, this was the most boring assignment possible to imagine. He had gotten unlucky, it was as simple as that. Right now he was lying in bed, stretching out after breakfast and shower. It had been little sleep the night before, the movie he had turned on was longer than he had expected. Never the less it was important to maintain the daily rhythm, and besides Nibulus 7 was not so many hours away.

This area of the neutral zone was uncharted territory for the federation, and with no map to follow he had to make course adjustments every now and then. Light was affected by gravity, and the light from Nibulus was bent by many other stars before it reached his eyes. For this reason one could not only aim in at a distant star and fly in a straight line towards it, expecting to drop out of warp at the right place. Adjustments had to be made, and sometimes unexpected bodies of mass might appear. Such unexpected bodies could be dark stars, small black holes, loose planets, asteroid-fields, or clouds of frozen gas - those were all Jonas could think of, anyway. Still, it was not enough work to make the days pass. So far in the journey Jonas had spent only about five percent of his waking hours in front of the console. The rest was boredom, food, movies, studies, a few push-ups and sit-ups whenever he got restless.

At full warp the ship was moving a hundred times faster than the speed of light. This was way too much to travel safely within the heliosphere of a star, so Jonas decelerated down to warp 4 when he was half a light-year away, dropping further down to warp 3 as he passed the heliopause. The console beeped when the first planet came within reach of the sensors. It was small, rocky and covered in frozen gas. Jonas compared its position with the expected position of the planet they had looked at from the outpost, getting a perfect match. This meant that he had arrived at his destination spot-on, which was very good indeed. It was only fifty million kilometers away when. Jonas turned of the warp-drive and instructed the computer to enter into low orbit around it. The console accepted his order with a short enthusiastic beep. Donatello was turned 180 degrees around so that the impulse-engines faced the sun that he had used as his point of navigational reference up to now. A long burst stopped the vessel in it's fall inwards, matching it's speed with that of the star. Then the computer turned Donatello 90 degrees clockwise and gave another burst, this time a bit shorter. A series of very short bursts followed, most of them made by the guidance-rockets built into the corners of the hull.

Donatello had gone from half the speed of light down to full stop, and then accelerated back up to one quarter light speed in another direction, all taking place within the time-frame of half a minute. Had it not been for technological innovations such as the inertial dampeners and the structural integrity field, Donatello would have been torn apart by the massive push of the impulse engine. Jonas would have been nothing more than a red stain scattered across a piece of deformed debris drifting through space. Twenty third century technology was impressive, much more impressive then what earlier generations had thought possible. The Human race had made several huge leaps forward since the destructive wars of the twentieth and twenty-first century. The rapid advancement caused concern among other space-faring species and superpowers in the galaxy, but so far Human technology was not in any way superseding that of it's competitors.

Nibulus 7 appeared at the screen. First as a little dot, then as a tennis ball, and then as a football. The size increased so rapidly that Jonas was gripped by a instinctive fear of diving head-first into the frozen surface. His jaw tightened and he suppressed a sudden urge to put his arm up in a protective position in front of his head - as if it was a approaching snowball that he could block with his forearm. The F-class shuttles seemed incapable of making gradual decelerations while in space. Their computers were wired so that they moved in jumps and leaps instead, a erratic behavior that seemed scary to pilots and passengers alike - at least during when landing. Jonas should be used to this after hundreds of test-drives and exercises at the academy, but neither simulations nor exercises in real shuttles had cured him completely from his fear of rapidly approaching celestial bodies. When the computer finally decided to do something, the planet was already filling the whole screen with its massive, dark and ominous presence. Jonas had his finger on the button that restored manual control and his heart was pounding against his chest. It was only about ten thousand kilometers from the surface when Donatello made a sudden 180-degree rotation, turning it's butt towards the frozen surface below. The distance was rapidly declining, so Jonas was relieved when he heard the sound of the impulse-engines firing again. The burst ended when Donatello's speed matched that of the planet, maintaining a stable position a few hundred kilometers above the surface. Upon observing that the planet had stopped moving, Jonas sighed in relief. When he leaned back in his chair he had complete faith in the computer's ability to finish the job without his involvement. First it leveled out Donatello so that the floor was aligned with the planet surface, then a gentle push accelerated it into geostationary orbit around the equatorial region of the planet.

What waited below was a frozen sea of nitrogen mixed with smaller amounts of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Mountains and piles or rock were scattered around the inhospitable and unforgiving surface like islands sticking out of the sea. Below it lay a compact layer of stone that covered the occasional veins of useful minerals. The spectroscopic analysis taken from Outpost 32 had found several large ones containing iron, and Jonas was going for the one closest to the surface. Nibulus 7 had no atmosphere, but the ground itself had a temperature of minus 260 Celsius, that was only thirteen Celsius away from absolute zero - the point were the electrons stopped rotating around their nucleus. Intimate contact between the ground and Donatello for more then a few minutes would be foolish because the coldness of the ground would spread through the hull, making it crispy while perhaps also gluing it to the surface.

Jonas sent Donatello into a rapidly declining orbit that ended a few meters above the ground. He pressed the button that started the countdown, and then he opened the shuttle-door. It was supplied with a force field similar to that of the shuttlebay, hindering the atmosphere from escaping through the open door. The spacesuit was on, and he had already pushed out the box with the mining-gear. The next step was to walk through the field himself, allowing gravity to pull him down to the surface. The four meter drop went slowly in 0,3 Gs, more then enough time to loose balance and turn upside-down. Touchdown was gentle despite landing on his hands, a bit cold though. His boots were thick and had efficient heat-elements installed. The gloves on the other hand, were much thinner, and the grid of fine heating-threads weaved into its fabric could not compensate for such a immediate temperature drop. The result was increasingly painful, comparable to the sensation one would get by clutching your hand around a metal pole with your bare hands at a cold winters day. Jonas pushed himself back up, retracted his legs so that his knees met his belly, and flipped around. The plan was to end up on his legs this time, but it didn't work. The momentum got too big to stop, and he was well into his second rotation when he hit the ground head-first. The acrobatic stunt ended with him lying flat down against the ground, studying the texture of frozen gas at close range. It was pretty white, with a vague hint of pink in it. The hard substance immediately started to send cold vibrations through his suit, so he got back up as fast as possible. The intimate contact with the hostile ground had been brief, but long enough to make him feel as cold as a chunk of ice. Never the less he remained happy and exited about having a chance to visit such a unspoiled world - way too many starfleet employees went through their careers without ever exploring new, unchartered planets and regions of space.

The energy-cell started humming, working hard to push electricity into the heating-elements between his feet and the ground, as well as the thread-grid in the suit and gloves. Jonas was thawing fast, it would only take a few minutes to loosen up again, regaining normal temperature within his suit and body. He rubbed his hands together while taking a superficial glance at the flat, monotone surface that surrounded him, trying hard to suppress the pain. Then he spotted the box with the mining equipment. It had landed a few meters away, upside-down so that its heating-element was facing space rather then the cold ground from which it was supposed to protect its cargo. In gravity such as this, normal gait was not possible. At the academy back on Earth, they had taken several trips to the moon where they had learned to "moon-walk" - a method of traversing low gravity terrain by moving in gentle jumps rather then steps. The technique worked as well at Nibulus 7 as it had done one the moon, bringing him up to the box without further incidents.

He flipped it over so that the side with the heating-element faced the ground, and then he opened the top lid. He wanted to work fast, extracting the metal and get back up as soon as possible. The iron vein was right under his feet, so all he had to do was to melt his way down with the phaser-drill. This versatile piece of technology could be set to spread its beam rather than focusing it on a single spot, evaporating ice over a larger area. He quickly assembled the tripod frame and attached the drill to it's ball-head. When he had typed in the right setting he tilted it downwards so that the beam would hit the ground in front of him. A final sweep with the tricorder reassured him that the metal vein was waiting below him, and then he pushed the button that activated the beam. A funnel-like beam of yellow light spread out from the short barrel, causing a instant reaction with the ground. The ice quickly evaporated, skipping its liquid form and going straight from ice to gas. Both the nitrogen and carbon gases were colorless, it could only be seen as a visual disturbance, a slight blur that propelled itself towards the sharp night-sky. In a few hours it would turn into snow and fall down again, unless it escaped the gravitational pull completely, that was. Jonas was not sure if a planet with such modest mass and gravity could hold on to gases as light as these when freed from the layer of ice that kept them down.

The hole increased in size and depth as he watched the beam at work. It took only a few minutes to uncover the stone below. In temperatures as low as this it would be crispy, and therefore easy to break apart with the disruptor-gun. He took the heavy and thick barrel out from the box and aimed towards the big cylinder-shaped hole that he had created.

"Bazum!"

The crude tool actually recoiled, just like a projectile weapon would do. This was quite unusual for a twenty-third century weapon, and Jonas was not prepared for it. The gun jumped up in his face so that the hind-end collided against the glass of his helmet. It was a hard blow, but the translucent aluminum of his visor got no visual scratch or bump - twenty-third century spacesuits were made for rough use. He tightened his grip around the handle before he fired another bolt. Same sound, same effect - only difference being that he managed to control the recoil this time. The stone was breaking into large chunks that could be removed either manually or by using the tractor-beam emitter. Jonas opted for the latter, as it was safer. He did not want the low surface-temperature to get another chance to spread to his suit, and neither did he want to risk having it torn or scratched by the sharp edges of the hole. At this stage he had no more use for the phaser drill, so he removed it from the tripod and put it back in the box, replacing it with the tractor-beam. The disruptor-gun was much smaller, so it fit nicely into the holster were he usually kept the tricorder.

Jonas shifted between the tractor-beam and the disruptor-gun, removing the layers of loose stone as he created them. He gathered them all in a pile at the left side of the hole, a pile that got bigger as the hole deepened. The tractor-beam could be widened out just like the phaser-drill, so with the funnel at maximum width he could keep a lot of stones floating at the same time.

It was great fun to fire the disruptor-gun, not only due to the powerful recoil, but also the slow moving bolts. Their short ride from barrel to target could actually be seen with the naked eye, even though it only took half a second or so. The bolts consisted of a forcefield that enveloped some sort of exotic and volatile energy-cluster. Upon colliding with the stone, the force-field ruptured, unleashing its content in a flash of light. Some species such as the Klingons and the Romulans used disruptors as military weapons, but those were faster and more powerful than the ones used by Humans. Unfortunately, the federation had still not managed to develop disruptors that were of any military value. The stony ground that he fired against was almost pitch black, but lines of red and dark-brown ran through it. Absence of oxygen meant absence of oxidization, so the iron layer below was silver-gray, untouched and uncorrupted by the elements. - Top quality in other words. Once the vein was uncovered, Jonas walked up to the edge of the hole and studied it closer, happy with his work so far.

Now was the time to get started with the actual extraction. He went back to the box to fetch the particle-teleporter that would split the iron into microscopic lumps and teleport the pellets into the cargo bay of his ship. The teleporter had roughly the same bazooka-like shape as the disruptor-gun, main difference being that the touch-sensitive folded outwards when he turned it on. He had gone through the menu a couple of times on his way over, so he knew exactly were to push in order to get a positive lock on Donatello's storage-room. It was a wonderful peace of machinery that carved through the iron as if it was made of molten butter. The mass of gray disappeared instantly when he swept the teleporter over it, reappearing as fine powder up in Donatello who orbited a few hundred kilometers over his head. Ton after ton went in, making the gray hole deeper and steeper.

With the first floor of Donatello filled to the brink with iron pellets, it was time to call it back down and climb in. Upon receiving his message it dived down from orbit and positioned itself a few meters above the flimsy ground that steamed away when exposed to the heat of its belly-thrusters. Jonas used his communicator to make the computer open the door above the inverted storage-bay entrance that now was blocked by iron ore. The equipment box was too large and heavy to take with him in the leap, so he used the tractor-beam to push it up and in. When it was safely parked on the floor of the well-lit room, he himself followed. He shoved his legs as hard as he could against the ground, a action that sent him flying through the flimsy haze of gas that surrounded the shuttle. He was coming in fast and hard, but the soft membrane of the forcefield slowed him down to a perfect landing.

"Job well done" He thought as the door closed behind him.

It was not until he removed his gloves - exposing his bare hands - that he noticed how the exterior bulk of his suit radiated intense coldness. The grid of heating-threads were only woven into the inner suit, the hard, protective shells that went across the chest, thighs, belly and lower legs were exposed to the elements without receiving artificial heating. These plates were now gathering moist from the room, rapidly turning it into a layer of frost around them while simultaneously causing room-temperature to drop dramatically. Jonas watched as it happened, considering what to do. He could put them in the freezer in order to block them out of the interior climate, but that place was supposed to hold a temperature of minus twenty, not minus a hundred and twenty. Exaggerated coldness might damage the various liquids used by the food synthesizer, and... Well, the interior ovens would just have to work hard to compensate. He took the space-gloves back on and pushed the rest of the suit over to the oven in the corner. Then he got down on all four and started puffing so that air cooled down by the suit-plates blew over the sensor beside the oven. Upon detecting the problem it set of a alarm at the pilots console while simultaneously diverting maximum yield to the ovens. Jonas walked over to the console to turn of the alarm. Everything was under control, so it happened in a relaxed manner, without stress or drama.

While at it he discovered that the service-minded computer had not only taken him back into orbit on its own, it also had stored a automatic scanner-report that it believed he might find interesting. If one was willing to overlook their scary dive-and-sudden-break maneuvers into orbit, the F-class computers shared a very friendly and considerate personality. What it wanted to show him was that something had exploded a few light-hours inwards in the system. All the planets were still there, so it had to have been something small. The blast-area was very concentrated, only a few meters big to begin with, expanding to a diameter of no more than a few kilometers before it dissolved completely. The computer calculated the explosion to have produced 1,3 megatons of energy, about the same as the nuclear warhead dropped on Hiroshima during the second world war. Exploring the report took Jonas mind away from the coldness of the cabin. The life-support system seemed vulnerable to sources of temperature-fluctuations originating from the interior rather than the exterior of the ship, a design-weakness that he had not been made aware of during his training-sessions at the academy. When it became impossible to ignore he went over to his bag and fetched a warm sweater in order to get a extra layer of insulation outside the light-brown pullover that was his everyday uniform. Those garments worked well in the temperated interior of starships, but whenever the temperature dropped below normal, it was good to keep something extra around.

The available data was not enough to determine what it was that had caused the explosion. The boring alternative was that two asteroids had collided at great speed, the exiting one was that it was related to one or more starships - either battle or accident. According to the logs there were no other ships in the area except the Enterprise, and that one was investigating a asteroid-field several light-years away, at the other side of the Nibulus star. Jonas started with the boring alternative, and he got a positive result when he scanned for dust and gravel in the area. It was a lot of it, it was hot, and it was moving away from the blast-zone. This finding supported his colliding-asteroids theory, but it was not enough to form a conclusion. The next step was to search for trails of a impulse-engine. Since it had happened far away from the planets it was improbable that any starships would be accelerating or decelerating within the area of question. For this reason Jonas expected a negative result, and the computer used only a few seconds to confirm his hunch. The Final test was for subspace distortions, a waste-product made by warp engines.

After some seconds of work, the computer came up with a result of sorts: Uncertainty. Knowing that it was unacceptable it requested permission to do another scan, this time more thorough and with increased sensibility. Jonas drew his breath in excitement before granting the wish. The computer would never have asked for this this unless it thought it might be on to something. A faint distortion meant very low warp, perhaps a primitive design made by a species that were taking their first steps into space. First-contact was the wet dream of any starfleet employee, and such adventures often started with faint warp-trails. In fact is was forbidden to establish open relations with civilizations that had not evolved warp-technology. They were considered immature, not ready for the huge dilemmas, dangers and opportunities that came with intergalactic relations. Jonas waiting eagerly for the result. Every square kilometer of the target area was bombarded with sub-space waves, waves that would bend and twist if they went through a distortion, sending a fraction of its energy back to the transmitter in the process. Scannings as exhaustive as this one had become was enough to drain considerable amounts of electricity, so Jonas was relieved when the scan finally ended. A text-message appeared on the screen, telling him to stand by while the computer prepared a visual presentation of its findings.

More seconds passed in passive excitement, watching and waiting as the computer worked. And then... Bingo! He had hit gold. A small vessel had recently plowed its way through this part of space, creating a tiny tunnel of expanded space in its wake. Such gaps could use as much as a full standard-day to close completely, and with the correct equipment they could be discovered no matter how small. The distortion followed a straight line, and it got stronger as it moved away from the sun, meaning that the craft was traveling outwards. Jonas was eager to find out were they were heading, so he extracted the angle of the warp-tunnel and turned it into a line that he pasted on to his star-chart. Without the exact speed of the vessel it was difficult to know its origins, but by looking at the line in correlation with the planets and its orbits one could see that it would pass pretty close to planet number four and that it was on a almost direct collision course with planet number six further out. Jonas smiled broadly as he zoomed in on the area with the exploded asteroid, the place were the trail had been detected. If the craft was as slow as he thought it would be, then it would still be present within the next grid of space. He started a new scan, this time looking for physical objects. Again he struck gold. Unfortunately it was too far away to get a proper visual through the second-hand hull-cameras he was equipped with, so a small warp-jump was needed in order to satisfy his curiosity.

Eager to get going, Jonas typed in a set of coordinates that would bring him into range. Then he broke out of orbit and accelerated up to quarter impulse. Acceleration was much slower with so many tons of iron ore below his feet, it took almost five minutes before the craft had achieved the requested velocity. The frozen surface of Nibulus 7 shrunk into nothingness behind him, and then he turned on the warp drive. The computer had worked the numbers even before he got started, so he knew that the jump would last about fifteen minutes, taking him a few billion kilometers inwards in the system. The plan was to enter orbit around the gas-giant that was midway between the seventh planet and the sun. Jonas found it unlikely that such a slow ship had the sensor-technology needed to detect him through the vast millions of kilometers that still would separate them, but caution was always wise, and the radiation emitted by the gas-giant would make him difficult to spot even by federation-level scanners. While he had been working the console, the interior life-support system and its ovens had won the battle against the cold spacesuit. Ordinary room-temperature had been restored, making it too hot for the thick sweater. Jonas took it of and threw it into a corner, then he rose from the chair in order to take a peak through the narrow front window above the console.

The gas giant appeared as a small dot of light-yellow at first, barely distinguishable from some of the less brilliant stars. As it grew larger - something that happened quite fast - the surface split into lines of yellow and white. Streams of orange appeared within the yellow lines, shades of gray within the white ones. When it got as big as a tennis-ball one could see the dark storm-center that ravaged its broad equatorial belt. It seemed to suck gray and brightly red mass out from it's deeper layers, spreading it out on the surface like water through a rotating sprinkler. It's slow growth on the screen indicated that this was a huge planet. The computer made its first analysis, guessing that its size was approximately twice as large as Jupiter's, but with less density and therefore similar gravitational pull. By the time Jonas sat down at the pilots-seat again, it already had two-page report ready for him. Jonas scrolled down to the conclusion, where it said that mass, shape, temperature and the rest was stable and that radiation-levels were within the limits that could be blocked by the hull - even at low orbit.

The universe was filled with gas-giants. Since it was the most common type of celestial bodies - and also the second easiest ones to spot after stars - they were considered quite boring. This did not mean however, that there were no life to be found here. Indeed, many gas giants hosted lifeforms that looked like jellyfish or balloons, creatures that floated around in the hospitable layer of gas that could usually be found between the exposed stratosphere on top, and the pressurized layers of fluids below. Unfortunately the surface temperature within the rightly pressurized gas-layer of this specimen was less than optimal, minus 50 Celsius and below. In addition, its rapid rotating created constant storms that turned the climate even harsher. Life however, could be surprisingly stubborn, so a theoretical possibility still existed.

As soon as the right sensor-systems came within range, Jonas closed the initial report and ordered the computer to perform a bio-scann. It turned out that the planet had a impressive density of bacteria within the equatorial belt and the two yellow lines below and above. Pretty monotone though, only a dozen different types. Such discoveries were pretty usual in starfleet, hardly worth raising an eyebrow over. Protocol never the less obligated him to put it in the records, and send it to the nearest research-facility. That would be the outpost he had arrived from, so he should transfer the data during his next chat with Ioannis... Or maybe not. He had no official business this deep into the system, not without Ioannis permission. Should he dare to publish his findings here, it might even have a negative effect on his career.

The superficial data recorder on the bacterias were stored in the computer-bank for the time being, and then it was time for Jonas to turn his attention towards what hopefully would prove to be more interesting lifeforms to explore. To begin with Jonas had found the solitude of individual space-exploration a bit lonely and boring, but now that his primary goal had been achieved and he was heading inwards in a star-system filled with celestial bodies and at least one intelligent life-form, it had in fact become quite fulfilling.

Low orbit had been achieved, and now it was finally time to take a closer look at the craft with the warp-drive. The camera zoomed in on it, establishing proper focus and image after a few seconds of fumbling. "Shape unknown" the computer informed in red, blinking letters - more and more exiting. Since the silhouette of the ship did not match any of the shapes registered in the computer-bank, the chances of a first-contact situation increased drastically. The slim shape looked very similar to some of the first big ships used for manned missions within the solar system of Earth during the second half of the twenty-first century. Its front part was big and boxy. A long and thin row of modules followed behind it, connecting it to the huge ball-shaped engine at far back.

Jonas started a combined technical and biological scan that deprived the unknown vessel and its inhabitants of its secrets in a matter of seconds. Crew of twelve, six at the big box in front, six in the foremost module behind it. The propulsion system was quite primitive, the computer guessed at pressure-based fission created by a artificial energy shield. Its main weapon was of exotic in its crude simplicity, the ship lacked gravity-plating, and? Huh? Jonas did not understand it... No warp-drive? Other essential things were missing as well, making this ship quite a mystery. Jonas followed it's slow progress for a few minutes before he felt ready to call Ioannis back home. A sub-space link was established, causing the workstation back at Ioannis office to start beeping. Outpost 32 was many light-years away, but at the star-chart it was quite close compared to key-planets such as Vulcan and Earth. Direct communication was still possible, even though there would be a slight lag in their dialog.

While waiting for the Ioannis to accept his call, Jonas decided to be completely honest about his detour. If he was lucky his boss would get so exited about the discovery that he would forget all about protocol, and besides: Scientists had a healthy tendency to ignore it whenever it suited them. Jonas didn't get a visual on him, instead the call was transferred from his workstation to his communicator. Those elegant little things could transmit image as well, but only if you linked it up to a headset and put it on a stable surface with the camera facing your general direction. At the sound of it, Ioannis was walking through one of the corridors of the station, Jonas could hear his shoes pound against the metal floor as well as the gentle hum emitted by the atmospheric recyclers that were scattered around the ship.

"Wow, that it excellent news!" Ioannis said after Jonas had told him about the detour and his discovery.

Jonas sighed in relief, happy because his boss was happy.

"Agreed. Listen, I would like to get back home with the iron you requested, but it would also be fun to follow these guys around. Any suggestions?"

A slight pause followed before the message reached Ioannis at the other end, and then a new one followed while his response traveled the other way around.

"I didn't give you a subspace beacon before your left, did I?" Ioannis wondered.

"Not that I am aware of"

"You might have one never the less, according to safety-regulations, a small one is supposed to be attached to the belly of the ship. If you can put it on theirs instead we can keep track and return later"

"Roger that, Jonas out"

Jonas searched the inventory and found the beacon right where Ioannis said it would be. This finding committed him to proceed with Ioannis plan, but he was uncertain on how to do it. The alien vessel had a radar, and the F-class shuttles were not in any way stealthed. - or did they? Upon closer scrutiny it seemed a bit twisted... As if someone had taken a shot at it with a phaser. Jonas was tired of doing scans, so he chose not to follow up on this observation, and instead assume that their radar worked, and that he would flash up as a Christmas-candle on their screens if he came to close. Such a scenario might lead to the next one - that they would take a shoot at him with that nuclear cannon of theirs. His defensive hull-shield would undoubtedly be able to handle a few hits without collapsing, but it would never the less be bad. This was dirty space, and the aliens might need their ammunition to carve a path through the dense fields of asteroids and gravel that waited further out, rather than wasting it on him. Not to mention all the stress and anxiety he would cause. If he could attach the beacon to a missile and shoot it in that might work, but it was crucial that he could make it stick without hurting the hull-plating - not that he had any missiles in store. Aaaaargh! Jonas hated that kind of problems. The tests at the academy had been filled with them, and now he was out here, doing the exact same kind of dry, theoretical puzzle-solving as he had been forced to do in class.

Jonas had spent about an hour in close orbit around the gas giant before he came up with a idea that might work. It was so simple and straight forward that he was kind of embarrassed about not having thought it up right away. He would bring his shuttle into pursuit behind the alien vessel, far enough away to stay clear of their radar. At first he would match their speed, but before releasing the beacon he would give himself a gentle push with the hind-thrusters. When the beacon was released it would continue straight ahead, colliding and sticking with the vessel after one hour and thirty-five minutes of flight. While he had been eating lunch, the computer had worked out the details, polishing the plan and its numbers. The food-synthesizer was good with tomato-soup. It tasted just like the freeze-dried variety one mixed with hot water back home. He had to wonder though, if this observation was to be interpreted as a compliment to the synthesizer, or a insult against the freeze-dried powder variety. Or maybe the other way around? Neither varieties were original tomato-soup made from natural ingredients, so... Damn! His head started hurting again. Moving over to something completely different, he had left the empty bowl and glass was at the table, a direct violation against at least five starfleet protocol-rules. "Avoid loose objects in shuttles" "Always clean up after your self", something about recycling organic materials, not to postpone that which could be done immediately, and... Hmm, he failed to remember the two last ones. - Bottom line was that starfleet regulations were as strict and unforgiving as space itself.

Jonas would much rather start working with the computer again, but by the time he got over to the pilots chair he had already developed bad conscience about the leftovers at the table. His desire to be dutiful was so strong that it left him no choice but to go back and put it into the washing-machine beside the food-synthesizer. After the boiling water had flushed them clean, a filter gathered all the organic material and sent it over to another machine that separated it into the same basic build-blocks that the food-synthesizer used to make new food. A lot of things in starships went in a circle of eternal recycling that minimized the necessity for new supplies. Without such solutions it would be impossible for big ships like the Enterprise to go for years without returning the core-worlds of federation space for fresh supplies. Many years of space exploration had lead to a perfection of recycling-technology, a technology that had been gradually introduced to civilian life at the surface as well. - It was in fact, the wet dream of the environmentalist extremists of the twentieth and twenty-first century.

With the dirty cutlery in its right place, he could finally get back to work. Jonas sat down before the console in order to look through the plan that the computer had hatched out for him. It looked pretty good, he had no second thoughts about pushing the button that turned the dry, two-dimensional lines, symbols and numbers on his screen into real-world action. Donatello lifted gradually out of orbit while continuing his spin around the planet for a few more rotations. Back out in proper space it floated inwards into the system at quarter impulse, engines off. The alien vessel was currently midway between the gas-giant, and a medium-sized rocky planet further in. Everything was taken care of, so Jonas used the idle time to make a rudimentary scan of the planet ahead. It was pretty cold, but it's moderate pressure and a breathable atmosphere never the less caused the computer to categorize it as a M-class planet. It would surprise Jonas if it turned out this place didn't host advanced lifeforms, it might even be the homeworld of the aliens with the primitive warp-drive. He felt a strong desire to learn more, but unfortunately he was still too far away to scan for biological life when Donatello suddenly turned around and made a full stop.

The alien vessel was passing him a few hundred thousand kilometers to the right, so a series of gentle maneuvers were implemented in order to match speed and direction with the target. A final push from the hind-thrusters brought it up to a speed slightly above the target it was pursuing. The beacon was released, Donatello pushed out and away shortly thereafter. The aliens continued steadily on it's course, unaware of the beacon that was creeping up on it from behind. These solid little boxes were not big enough to be detected by their crude radar, but chances were that they would hear the sound it made as it stuck to the hull. Sub-space beacons were normally used in emergency situations, ships in distress activated them so that other spacecrafts in the region could come looking for them. Speaking of which... Since Enterprise was nearby he would have to call them and tell about his work here, making sure that they did not interfere with his research-object. Jonas went back to full stop and opened a channel to the Enterprise bridge. From his current position he was actually closer to this ship than he was to his new home at Outpost 32. Enterprise was just a few hours away at full warp, exploring a asteroid-field between Nibulus and it's closest star - if he remembered correctly.

"Good afternoon, how can I help you?" Captain Kirk said.

He seemed as comfortable and confident as he had been during their last meeting. His captain's chair suited him, and when surrounded by hard-working officers - the elite of starfleet - it strengthened the already authoritarian aura of the bridge. It never ceased to amaze Jonas how much button-pushing and screen-gazing it took to run a starship. Computers took care of a lot, but the need for a human element seemed to remain constant no matter how complex they got. Kirk's officers where all completely mesmerized by their consoles and whatever it was that was going on their screens. The only ones who were paying attention to Jonas were Kirk himself, and his communication officer, a slender black woman. Other than Kirk, he only knew one of the people on the bridge by name - Spock. The cold and logical Vulcan was sitting at his right side, facing the console built into the curved wall. His eyes were fixed at a unstable graph that jumped and dived as it ran across his screen. From what he could make out of the console, Jonas figured that it was some kind of violently fluctuating space-radiation.

"In a few hours you will receive sub-space emergency-signal" Jonas said, going straight to the point. Since everyone seemed so busy he figured it would be best not to take up their precious time with small-talk.

"Any trouble ahead?" Kirk wondered. He straightened up in his chair, preparing himself for bad news.

"Not at all, that's why I'm calling. I'm doing some research for Outpost 32, but I ran out of standard-probes"

Jonas explained. To say that he had brought none at all would just make him look sloppy, and he wasn't in the mood to explain the hole story about the mining-operation that had been his original assignment .

"Marking wild beasts sir?" Kirk said smiling.

"Kind of. Found a primitive vessels heading outwards in the Nibulus system, my boss wants me to keep an eye on it"

At this point in the dialog, Spock turned towards the main-screen that Jonas was currently filling.

"Permission to speak sir?" He asked Kirk.

"Please do" Kirk answered in a friendly manner, keeping his eyes fixed on Jonas.

"Sub-space emergency beacons can be set to use all non-emergency channels. It shouldn't be to difficult to reconfigure"

"I'll look into it" Jonas promised.

"Do that, let us know if it doesn't work out, Kirk out"

"Will do"

Jonas turned of his camera again. Spock had given him a second task to fulfill, but while doing so he would also have to keep an eye on the subspace-beacon currently drifting through space, as well as the target it was heading for. Should the alien vessel suddenly change direction he would have to sneak in and pick it again. This was a lot for one person to handle, so it was important to remain calm and focused. Right now that beacon was about to enter into the range of the alien radar. Hopefully it would pass through undetected, but if not... Bang! - Mission failed. Jonas zoomed in on their nuclear cannon and opened it as a fifth image on the screen. It remained still, pointing in some random direction up and rightwards. This was most probably the weapon that had set of the explosion that had lead him to them, a test-fire that had blown up an asteroid nearby.

Minutes passed without any sign of movement. The cannon remained in the same position, and the ship itself made not attempt at a evasive maneuver. Everything seemed to be going according to plan, a brief smile passed over his lips. Then he got started on the job Spock had given him - to reconfiguring the beacon so that it transmitted on a non-emergency frequented. The menu was pretty straight forward, it didn't take a lot of work to prove that Spock was right about the transmitter and its flexibility. Jonas uttered a depressed sigh while choosing a idle frequency. He would have liked it much, much better if Spock was wrong - people as smart as him were just annoying.

Jonas turned on the beacon and put it up on the speaker. "Beep-beep-beep" - A nice artificial sound that would get weaker the further he moved away from it. So far so good, now it was only one step left in the process of "marking the wild beast" as Kirk had put it. Jonas rewired the console so that he could use it to manually maneuver the beacon rather than the shuttle itself. In order to avoid damage to their hull he would have to turn it a 180 degrees around and empty its hind-thrusters. The difference in speed between the two objects were minimal in space-terms, but he had to keep in mind that this was a primitive vessel. If they used a weak and basic alloy such as steel or aluminum it might break through even on very low impact-velocity. All starfleet shuttles and ships used duranium as their main hull-material, but this was a artificial material that had not been evolved on Earth before the early twenty-second century. Jonas didn't bother to dig up his earlier scan of the ship to get more intell on their hull, he would see to it that his beacon landed so soft and gently that it would not make a mark, not even if it was made out of butter.

Jonas turned it around and started the deceleration about fifty kilometers away from impact. The numbers of horsepowers carried inside its rocket engine was quite humble, making deceleration sluggish. When the tank had emptied, the beacon had reduced its speed so that it was only sixty kilometers an hour faster than that of the alien vessel, crawling slowly towards it. His safety-margin had been big, so there was still a lot of space between them. Things were getting boring, Jonas felt that his eyelids grew heavy and that he was getting sleepy. The consoles seemed monotone and uninteresting, and his soul screamed for coffee.

It felt like he had been sitting in the pilot's chair for a eternity, and he was completely fed up with the console, the computer and everything about them. The final seconds before landing-and-attachment became downright torture, so when it was finally done with, he rose abruptly from the pilot's chair, almost throwing himself over to the food-synthesizer.

Break at last.


	9. Chapter 9: Hot pursuit

Dall`ek was about to inspect the reactor-pit. He had not been down there for quite some time, too many other duties had gotten in the way, and besides: everything seemed to be working smoothly. The captains quarters were positioned just behind the bridge at the front head of the ship, so in order to get to the reactor pit at the back he had to walk the through the full length of the main corridor. It was almost a hundred meters long, connecting the bridge at the front head-section with the main body between the wings. Back in the main body it went above the storage-bay, holographic shooting-range, training-room, transporter room and dining-hall at the deck below, squeezing its way in between the big deuterium-tanks at his right and left side.

The interior of the "Fist of Kahless" was minimalistic and efficient - no extra resources had been spent on things like decoration or paint. The metal walls were kept in their natural color, usually steel-gray or light-brown. Dall`ek liked his ship just the way it was, he felt nothing but contempt for the bigger and more luxuriously outfitted starships that humans and many other species plodded around in. Those idiots seemed to believe that the conquest of space was just one big, luxury-cruise to be filled with parties, fancy artwork, good food and comfortable furniture. The Klingon empire would teach all those decadent idiots a lesson or two - Dall`ek would see to that. Right now it was midnight at the ship, so everyone were sleeping except the graveyard shift - two at the reactor-pit and two at the bridge. Their main job was to monitor the screens and sound the alarm if anything unexpected occurred, summoning everyone else back to their posts. The minimalistic style of Klingon furnishing and interior design meant that lights were also sparsely distributed. At the "Fist of Kahless" it was always dark, always. Most humans would get depressed after a few days in such surroundings, but Klingons seldom felt such emotions.

The sound of Dall`ek's hard boots against the metal floor echoed through the empty corridor as he walked. Thick fire-doors were placed at regular intervals, one for every thirty meters or so. For the time being they were all open, all except the one that separated the corridor from the reactor-pit. This door was even thicker than the others, built to block out the destructive explosions that would occur if something went wrong inside. A lot of energy was concentrated on the other side of that door, even the smallest malfunctions could cause the ship to lit up like a supernova.

Dall`ek pushed the buttons that opened the door, and walked in.

"At ease soldiers!" He said when the two console-operators rose from their seats to great him.

"Sir!" the highest ranking one said. He did the traditional Klingon military salute - clutching his fist and hitting it against his chest at the hearts side. The lower ranking soldier quickly followed his example, and then they sat down again.

Dall`ek strolled casually towards the closest console. It was positioned about ten meters away from the warp-core, a dense energy-field that kept the superheated warp-plasma in check. The plasma was heated up by a matter-antimatter reaction, and then it was sent out to the plasma-injectors that transmitted it to the warp-nacelles out on the wings. The warp-plasma was way too energy-rich to be contained by any physical material, the glass-cylinder that encapsulated it would offer no resistance what so ever if the field broke down. At the moment the warp-core was running on full power, so only a few percent of the light emitted by the white-glowing plasma was let through the shaded glass.

"Status?" Dall`ek asked as he stopped by the console, looking at its various graphs and symbols with a keen eye.

"We will have to cool down when we reach the system"

The operator said while scrutinizing the warp-core. Keeping it within a glass-container rather than something made out of metal had some benefits, a trained warp-engineer could see with his naked eye what he would otherwise have had to look through hundreds of different instrument-readings to figure out. To Dall`ek, the warp-core looked completely normal and healthy. A layer of long and white flames pushed passionately against the invisible energy-barrier. Strains of blue whirled around beneath them, circling the opposite direction. Their short life seemed to start at the bottom of the container, rapidly lifting towards the top in a spiral-move that ended when they disintegrated into more whiteness at the upper edge of the force field.

"Fair enough" Dall`ek answered while enjoying the sharp and fast-moving colors.

One week of continuous warp was good enough for him. He expected neither more nor less from his engineers and warp-system.

"What about impulse?" He wondered.

"I think it's okay - ask Calor up at second"

The roof of the room was shaped around the impulse-engines, two long and rectangular boxes whose interior machinery continued backwards, out of the room. Rather than bending space itself, these engines accelerated plasma up to near light-speed and shot it out through the exhaust muzzle, that way pushing the craft forward. During warp this engine was off-line, but since it was used to vent out excess-heat, it didn't look that way from the outside. The impulse engines installed into the "Fist of Kahless" were state-of-the-art equipment, so powerful that the desired speed could be achieved in small bursts lasting no more than twenty seconds. Never the less it was no easy thing running it. Things could go wrong, manual direction was often required. Therefore a platform was set up between the engines, and this platform contained several monitors and consoles concentrating on the impulse-engines alone.

"How is impulse?" Dall`ek screamed towards the figure currently occupying the seat behind the consoles. The soldier named Calor rose to his feet and leaned over the rail to get a better view of his captain.

"It was good the last time I ran a diagnostic, I can do another one if you like." He answered. Calor was a freshman, straight out of the military academy. He was a bit to slender to be considered handsome among Klingon females, but he was quick and agile – a excellent solider as long as he didn't have to carry anything heavy.

"Do that!"

Dall`ek yelled at him, despite being absolutely certain that everything was as it should be. All the systems were checked several times a day, making sure they were ready for anything the gods could throw at them. Giving such stupid orders were nothing more than a tradition built into the ritual of inspection. All work-stations within the ship had to be inspected by the captain at irregular intervals, a good captain would pop up anywhere at any time. Now that impulse and warp had been checked, Dall`ek could pass over to the third part of the ritual: The dust-hunt. Lazy and bad soldiers failed to wash properly, allowing dust and dirt to pile up in the corners. Dall`ek walked around the warp-core in a large circle, bent forwards like an old man. His search was futile, this was perhaps the cleanest room of the ship. Just as he rounded off his dust-hunt and straightened back up to his normal position, Calor completed the diagnostic.

"Impulse-reactor and drive-coil in order" He reporter.

"Good, keep up the good work!"

Dall`ek whirled around and walked out of the room. He was getting sick and tired of the ugly corridor, so he ran all the way back to the bridge up front.

"How long to the Nibulus-system!" He screamed while leaping through the door.

The bridge officers present were startled by his sudden entry, he had caught them completely off guard.

"Sir!" The youngest of the two shouted back at him while jumping up from the chair, rapidly shifting from laid-back, drowsiness to taut attention. The other one was a bit slower to get up on on his feet, mostly because he was a veteran of a much higher rank, and therefore he could afford to be less jumpy and military correct than the youngsters.

"Sir?" He asked puzzled. His name was Jaakh, and he was Dall`ek's second in command.

"How long to the Nibulus-system?" Dall`ek repeated, this time a bit less energetic.

"Moment sir" Jaakh took a brief look at his console.

"We will be there at dawn sir" He then said.

"How are weapons doing?" Dall`ek demanded to know.

"Photon-torpedoes armed and waiting in their tubes, disruptors are kept charged and ready" The youngster at the weapons-station reported.

"Good! At ease!"

His officers sat down again. When Dall`ek turned around and stepped towards it, the exit-door opened automatically to let him through. When it closed behind him he was alone in the corridor again, but this time he didn't have long to walk. His quarter was positioned behind the first door at the right side, giving him easy access to the bridge where he spent most of his waking hours.

The small, windowless room contained only a thin, hard mattress, and a small locker where he kept his gun, clothing and some other personal belongings. At daytime it was mostly empty because everything except the heavy armor-sash, chain-mail and energy-belt was parts of his daily outfit. Klingon men were neither vain nor possessive. They owned little, and since they cared even less about personal hygiene than they did for material possessions not relevant for warfare, no more than one outfit was needed. Dall`ek had two bladed weapons as well, his curved two-handed bat`leth, and the smaller d'k-tahg dagger were both hanging on the wall behind him. Whenever he had killed someone in battle he would carve a small line into a spot in the wall that was currently hidden behind the long and elegantly curved blade of the bat`leth. Right now he had twelve personal kills, not counting the huge mass of people they had blown up in ship-to-ship battles. The honor of such kills were collective rather than individual, so the lines representing them were carved into a corner of the bridge rather than his personal quarter. 27 ships so far, destroyed over the twenty-five years that had passed since its virgin voyage out of space-dock. Dall`ek was proud to have kept such a high standard - it was something for other captains to strive towards.

Tomorrow might grant them another victory, another mark in the wall. But first it was time to sleep. Dall`ek removed everything but the underclothing and curled it into a little ball that he jammed it into the locker. It was a bit to small for him, he was thinking about finding some metal scrap down at the storage-bay and see if he could weld himself another one. Klingons didn't use things like duvets, pillows or sheets. Dall`ek laid down on the naked mattress and waited for the lights to go out. A sensor put them of when it had not detected movement for a few minutes, but since it didn't go all the way down to the floor he could safely toss and turn in his sleep without reactivating it.

* * *

><p>Morning.<p>

The room was pitch black except from the luminous digits on the alarm-clock built into the wall. All the crew quarters had them, and Dall`ek had set them to ring early in the morning every day, no matter what plans they had ahead of them. He believed that a healthy Klingon should maintain a productive daily rhythm and avoid oversleeping. Five hours a night should do - four in his case. Unfortunately it had gotten quite late the night before, and now he was dead-tired. At such days it was good to have a cup of raktajino - a Klingon drink that closely resembled human coffee in color and effect, only difference being the taste, that was much, much better.

While Dall`ek sat at his captains-chair, half asleep, grumpy and completely drained of energy, he had no way to know it, but a few centuries into the future, Klingon rakajino would push human coffee out of the market. The Humans would sit in their stupid coffee-bars - places that Dall`ek undoubtedly would find utterly repulsive and decadent had he ever visited one - and there they would drink Klingon rakajino. Dall`ek felt life return to him for every sip, the hot droplets sendt waves of warm well-being through his body on its way from throat to belly. It didn't take long before he was back to his good old self again, ready to get started on a new day in proud service to the empire.

The rakajino helped him regain his full consciousness, climbing out of his previous zombie-state. For the last five minutes it had just been him and the cup, but now he felt ready to expand his focus a bit, starting with the main monitor. The stars were not moving, meaning that they had dropped out of warp. His eyes wandered over to his second in command, Jaakh.

"Status-report!" He screamed hoarsely.

"We are entering the Nibulus system at full impulse, passing the outermost planet in five minutes"

"Drop to half impulse and begin planetary scans"Dall`ek ordered.

Rushing around at full impulse inside a star-system was way too fast for him, specially this early in the morning. It took time to get to know a new star and its planets, its distinct personality so to say. This star-system contained more solid mass, and less liquid then what was usual. Its dense, rocky planets were all quite big - having a average gravitational pull of 1,2 Klingon Gs. Many of them were also orbiting quite close to their heavy sun, the surface temperature of the first three planets were all hot enough to boil water on their scarred and scorched surfaces. The fourth one had been similar, had it not been for the dense layer of white clouds that bounced the sunlight back into space. Planet number five was colder, but still within the temperated belt. The sixth stone-planet was a bit smaller than the others, orbiting the only gas-giant in the system. Planet number seven was the one they would pass in a few minutes, or its orbital circle to be more precise - the planet itself was on the other side of the sun.

Detecting planets was easy thanks to highly sensitive gravity-field scanners who could detect big clusters of mass without having to look for them. Sholax - the science-officer on board - put everything up on the main screen as it was located, gradually expanding the map until it was filled with colored dots and text.

"What was it we are supposed to do again?" Dall`ek asked himself.

Whenever the computer and the sensors wired to it assaulted him with such massive flood-waves of information, it had a tendency to push the things that really mattered out and away. He had to rewind his brain several days in order to remember.

"Oh, yeah: Check for violations of Klingon territory."He recalled, thinking about the grizzled face of the general that had sent him here. Then he ordered Sholax to scan for trails of warp engines.

The result was quite surprising, not zero, not one, not even two - but three warp-trails were detected, all of them so faint that they were hardly readable. Such trails dissolved fast, so had they arrived a couple of hours later, they may not have detected anything at all. The computer analyzed the result, finding out that the sharpest and most distinct one was seven hours old, and that only one of them belonged to a big ship. The two smaller were probably shuttles. One was heading for the gas giant where it probably was planning to land at its satellite, the second was heading out of the system.

As the scanning proceeded it became evident that they had encountered a crime-scene. Not only had Klingon territory been breached, but the ones responsible for the crime had been involved in a fire-fight among them selves. A shock-wave of radioactivity originating from a nuclear detonation passed them on their way inwards, and when they got even closer they detected bi-products of phaser-fire. Nuclear warheads had gone obsolete among the Klingons many centuries ago, and as far as Dall`ek's knowledge stretched, none of their adversaries used them either. Phaser fire on the other hand, was as normal as gas giants, so this had been a clash between uneven opponents.

"We have a ship!" Sholax reported.

"On screen!" Dall`ek ordered.

"It looks pretty dead sir" Sholax informed while zooming in on the object of interest.

The long and slender ship could roughly be described as a huge cylinder with a box in one end, and a metal ball in the other. More details became visible as it grew bigger on the screen. A round particle-shield had been set up in front of the box, meaning that the ball at the other end was the propulsion-engine. There was at least one huge hole in the big fuel-tank that filled up most of the aft-section. Black skid-marks seemed to shoot out of it, meaning that the tank had been busted open by a sudden and steep temperature increase. As they closed in on it, one could see that this was not unique to the fuel-tank. Two of the appendixes - probably navigational sensors - that stood out from the rectangular modules that formed a line of boxes between the fuel tank and the front-section, were burnt and twisted. In addition, there was at least four black marks on the hull itself, Dall`ek spotted two at the front section, and two on the ball-shaped engine-reactor.

"Looks like these guys took quite a beating" Dall`ek commented.

"Should I check for life-signs?" Sholax asked.

"Go ahead" Dall`ek agreed.

A brief pause occurred while the scanning-beams traveled towards their target. Some of them were reflected back towards the ship, where the computer analyzed their altered state as a positive result.

"Twelve life-signs on board, they don't match anything in our database"

"Technical scan" Dall`ek requested.

He was starting to get curious on this ship and its inhabitants. If they were from a planet nearby they just might have found themselves a nice place to plunder. He was eager to see what kind of technology they displayed. If it turned out to be a pre-warp civilization they would be the perfect victim - wealthy and resourceful enough to send ships into space, completely helpless against modern weaponry. A new world to plunder and enslave might await them, and if so Dall`ek and his crew would get the honor of first-kill.

"Nothing sir, this ship has been stripped. No communications, no warp, no engines, nothing. Not even a power plant, even though they have a electrical grid" Sholax read of his panel.

"We have been robbed sir!" Jaakh screamed angrily while turning around in his chair so that he was facing the captain rather than the main monitor.

Technically speaking it was not they who had been robbed, but according to Klingon logic everything within Klingon territory belonged to the Klingons. The alien ship was theirs to take - not some lousy second-rate bandits.

"Full stop, analyze warp-trails. Is it any way to identify the one belonging to the robbers?" Dall`ek wondered.

"Its probably the biggest trail, the other two are too small to carry with them something as big as a power-plant" Sholax reasoned.

"Good, find trail and follow at maximum warp. We will return to this place later"

Dall`ek leaned back in his chair, happy with his decision. Sholax thought for a second, tapping his hands against the edge of his console.

"I could trace the general direction of the third trail as well, we could follow later" He then suggested.

"Do that, we leave when you are ready"

It didn't take much longer than it had done to speak the words. A handful of bleeps and beeps later Sholax had a interesting result to report:

"Done. Its course is taking it close by a protostar at the edge of federation space"

"Humans" Dall`ek said intrigued.

It was a wild guess of course - too soon to speculate, to many unknown factors. It could be fun though, Humans were a new and fresh competitor whose territory had only recently grown into zones of Klingon interest.

"Anyway, match course with the robbers - maximum warp"

Naq`Da - his navigational officer - turned the ship twenty degrees to the right, and then twenty degrees downwards before he ordered the reactor pit to engage impulse. Even though protocol allowed it during certain types of emergency situations, it was not normal procedure to control the engines directly from the bridge. Therefore a slight delay always followed before the order fed into the consoles in the pit turned into action.

"We are passing the gas giant at our right side" Naq`Da informed.

After several years as his navigational officer, he knew very well that his captain enjoyed gazing at the planets they passed, no matter how unremarkable and unimportant they were. Space was so very empty, so it was good to have some physical mass to focus on every now and then.

"Delay warp, on screen." Dall`ek demanded.

Odd as it might be, this specific gas giant looked exactly like the closest one to Qo'noS, the Klingon homeworld. Its white and yellow stripes, even the storm-center at its equator was the same. Right now its only satellite was rising up from its hiding place behind the endless sea below them. The position of the Nibulus sun made it sickle-shaped, only a fraction of its shock-white surface was visible. The dramatic landscape of deep canyons, crates and tall, steep mountains was covered by an evenly distributed layer of white frost. This was undoubtedly a barren, cold and inhospitable place, even its atmosphere looked white and frosty, the white ground seemed to damp off, mixing itself with the air. The view was indeed grand. As it grew bigger on their screen it became breath-taking even for an experienced starship captain like Dall`ek.

"Scan that planet!" He demanded, yearning for a more detailed description of this majestic new world. Such curiosity was not common among the Klingons. Most of them saw science and data-recording as little more than a means to become better and more efficient warriors. Sholax looked oddly at him for a moment, wondering what qualities this planet could possible have that might make it valuable for the Klingon empire. He completed the scan regardless, ending up with a result that he read out loud as the data ticked into his console:

"Various types of rock, little valuable minerals, lots of volcanic activity, some water in the surface-areas, 7% in liquid form. Ground covered in snow consisting of 90% carbon dioxide, ten percent water-ice. Atmosphere of nitrogen and argon with increasingly large concentrations of carbon dioxide gas as you move closer to the equatorial regions and around the volcanoes. It's pressure is 0,7, gravity at 0,49, lots of wind. Average temperature is minus 85 Celsius."

"I like this place" Dall`ek said with a dreamy look on his face.

He had always dreamed about settling on a place like that, perhaps stay there for a year or so - getting in touch with nature and the elements.

"Any life-forms?" He hopefully wondered.

"We will be within range for a bio-scan in five minutes or so" Sholax informed.

"But I need the warp-engines in three" Naq`Da protested.

"Well, duty first." Dall`ek sighed, slightly depressed about having to leave all this beautiful wilderness behind.

At times one might be tempted to believe that an extra minute or two mattered little, but the discoveries just made actually suggested the opposite. If they had given them selves the time needed to cool the engines rather than going one week at continuous full-warp, or if Dall`ek had given into temptation and taken a nap after that delicious meal of Gagh they had devoured before departure, these warp-trails may never have been discovered. They might had plodded around in this system without ever knowing that the empire had gotten robbed, and... Well, point proven - there was no need for further thoughts on the subject. Dall`ek was certain in his conclusion, that time mattered - always and anywhere.

"Okay, take us out when ready" Dall`ek ordered.

The gas giant and the icy satellite that Dall`ek had fallen in love with were both left behind as "The fist of Khaless" activated its warp-engine and moved rapidly out of the system. They were now heading back into deep space, following a trail that ran parallel with the neutral corridor that separated Klingon from Federation space. Everything out here was uncharted, and therefore it was a risky place to venture. The criminals however, had to pay with their lives for violating their borders - of this there could be no question. Dall`ek tried to prepare his mind for battle, his inner eye was filled up with tactic-screens and images of weapons firing.

"Run system-check on stealth and weapons-system" He ordered.

Victory was impossible without well-functioning and maintained weapons. An old saying said that in space one could never run a check to often, and Dall`ek saw the wisdom in that. The system-check kept his weapons operator busy for a while. For a few seconds the soft, low beeps and bleeps from his console was the only sound in the room, but then another artificial sound broke in. The alarm originated from the warp-field monitor, one out of several screens built around the navigational seat were Naq`Da sat. Dall`ek turned his chair towards the sound to take a better look at the blinking screen.

"Something wrong in the reactor-pit" Naq`Da said.

The useless piece of information made Dall`ek angry. He shook his shoulders while looking at Naq`Da with a expression that was a mix of impeachment, surprise, and disappointment. Naq`Da's thick eyebrows lowered as he analyzed the situation unfolding.

"One of the warp-coils on the starboard nacelle have overheated. I have now taken it off-line, and..."

Performing such complex operations while talking simultaneously, was difficult. Naq`Da stopped half-way in the sentence, taking a deep breath while tapping aggressively against his screen.

"... Redirecting extra coolant-aid from the impulse-drives" He then finished.

"Will we loose speed?" Dall`ek worried.

"Yes, the port nacelle is now readjusting, lowering their output with 0,5 warp"

"Does this mean that...?" Dall`ek realized that a brief look at the forward monitor was all he needed to validate or reject his suspicion.

"Oh, crap!" He burst out.

The stars were not moving right, and it didn't take a genius to understand that it was due to the sudden imbalance between the port and starboard nacelle. Their warp-bubble had been disturbed in a asymmetrical way, sending them into a rightwards curve.

"Readjust to previous course" Dall`ek ordered, more apathetic than frustrated.

"We need to keep this engine going until we find these scumbags!" He added when apathy gave way to anger.

"Current speed at warp 6,5" Naq`Da informed in a neutral tone, ignoring the emotional outburst of his captain.

A brief glimpse towards the captain warned Naq`Da that Dall`ek was getting dangerously grumpy. If anything else went wrong now, the operator reporting it would risk becoming the focus-point of his full fury. Dall`ek had wrapped both hands into a pair of tight fists. For the time being they were resting idly against his armrests, not knowing who or what to hit in order to release the tension built up inside him. Klingons were very emotional creatures, a bit too emotional at times. Dall`ek knew very well that the hot temperament of himself and others of his kind did not always turn into constructive action and good decisions. He took a deep breath and did his very best to calm down.

Naq`Da helped him a bit on his way by feeding him some encouraging data to keep his spirits up:

"Our speed is down 0,5, but we are still 1,0 above normal cruising-speed, and our ships are among the fastest in the quadrant"

"Let me know if the warp-trail gets sharper"

"Its already happening" Sholax informed. A smile passed over his lips as he delivered the good news.

"HA! The bastards are slow!" Dall`ek screamed in triumph.

"They might be within visual range within an hour" Sholax estimated.

His voice revealed a slight uncertainty about how to sum up his results. So far the qualities of the warp-trail had not allowed him to pinpoint the type of warp-engine used, and therefore the speed also remained unknown. Without such data it was impossible to determine the level of space-expansion created in their immediate wake, so the round number given to his superior was at best only a qualified guess.

"Prepare the boarding-team" Dall`ek ordered with eager passion.

"Yes sir" Jaakh said loud and clear.

Aboard Klingon ships, the second in command had the honor of leading the boarding-team, the best warriors on his ship. The downside of this tradition was that Dall`ek lost a experienced tactician from the bridge during combat. Jaakh's advice was greatly treasured, and there were not really anyone else among the bridge-officer that could fill his shoes.

After Jaakh had left the room, Dall`ek could not think of anything more to do but wait, tapping his knuckles against the armrests of his seat while watching the star fly by, and... Hm – it would be good to get that warp coil back online, and there were probably other tasks to do as well. Silence at the bridge was bad because it revealed lack of energy and initiative from the captain. There was always something to keep ones hands busy: updates, system-checks, improvements.

"Run shield and hull integrity-test" Dall`ek ordered, liberating his weapons-officer from unemployment. His name was Xcarxz-Rosh-Ga`hgh, or something like that. He came from the far north of Qo'noS, and like all other Klingons from the northern clans, had a weird name that was hard to remember and almost impossible to pronounce right. Dall`ek had tried a few times before he gave up, but he had still not thought up a simpler nick to give him. This was not the right time to think something up, so instead he came up with another task to keep their hands busy:

"Call up the reactor pit and ask them to fix the warp coil!"

"I doubt if there is much they can do during warp." Naq`Da answered.

"All good" The weapons officer with the odd name reported while Naq`Da made the call.

At the same time, a dry, crispy voice entered the room through the crappy speakers built into Naq`Da's console. Since it was meant for his ears rather than the bridge as a whole, Dall`ek could only hear it as unclear mumbling. Naq`Da bent forward, sharpening his ears in an attempt to fish out the clear words that emerged in between the static and crackles. The speaker was worse now than ever, they should have replaced it a long time ago. Silence hit the bridge while the message repeated itself.

"Plasma-leak!" Naq`Da suddenly screamed in horror.

That was bad, in fact it was one of the worst combinations of words that existed in the dictionary of technical problems. The only ones that toppled it was disastrous critical failures such as "rapid pressure drop" "warp-core breach" and "Anti-matter leak" - a word so bad that the unfortunate bridge officer whose duty it was to report it hardly ever had time to finish the sentence before the ship exploded. Dall`ek's pulse rose considerably, but he did his best to seem calm at the outside.

"It's the starboard nacelle again. A plasma-tube force field generator have collapsed, the plasma have burned through the plasma tube, currently leaking into the access-shaft. The vents are working, no pressure-buildup." Naq`Da had already regained his professional calmness, the words were spit out with mechanical flatness.

"How much are we loosing?" Dall`ek asked, trying not to sound anxious.

Warp-plasma was too dangerous to keep outside the force-field when heated up to it's current levels, so despite its high prize they had no option but to push it out into space. Dall`ek was holding his breath and tightening his fist, hoping that they found a way to stop it before the hole expanded.

"Ten liters a minute, the hole will continue to expand unless we shut down another pair of warp-coils." Naq`Da informed.

"Damn! What do you suggest?" Dall`ek didn't want to loose warp-plasma, but neither did he want his prey to outrun them.

"I say we take a break sir. We are pushing our engines too far"

Dall`ek snarled at the cowardly proposal, letting these foul creatures go free was simply out of the question.

"We can still do it! Let's shut down the second pair of coils, we might still be faster"

"Yes sir"

Naq`Da had just sent the order forward to the reactor pit when something exiting flashed up on his console

"Sir! Sir!" He screamed joyfully.

The artificial light from the blinking screen was reflected against his sharp mouthful of teeth. His broad smile was undoubtedly closely related to the things going on at his console.

"Hm?" Dall`ek tilted his head sideways while looking at him. The massive enthusiasm was contagious, causing him to smile as well.

"We have found them! Visual range in seven seconds!"

"Good, can we afford to reduce our warp bit?" Dall`ek wondered.

"They are ridiculously slow sir, I'll match speed with them as soon as we enter weapons range"

Their speed was reduced, and their target was brought up on the main monitor. The distance between them was rapidly closing, despite their modest velocity of only warp 5.

"Ferengi!" Dall`ek growled out with contempt.

He felt no need to consult the computer-bank to verify his claim - the round, awkward shape of their ships was well known throughout the quadrant. The Ferengi ships had no physical resemblance with any known sentient lifeforms capable of having this deformity, but never the less it reminded him of a hunchback. The long neck ended in a curved back where the hull went around the over-sized storage-bay. - This was the place were those greedy bastards collected their loot. It was probably filled with values, much more than the Klingons could take with them should they manage to defuse and board them. Victory would in other words force them to prioritize. Such choices were simplified a lot by the fact that Klingons cared little for material values. When ever they plundered a ship or planet they would take the best weapons, the best food, and the best drink. If they ran across it, those warriors who had wives back home would take with them jewelry or clothing that they thought would appeal to the feminine vanity, but commerce and trade for the goal of profit were alien concepts to them.

"Engage cloak!" Dall`ek ordered.

The weapons officer with the strange name did as ordered. With the push of a button, the vessel became impossible to detect with the naked eye, as well as all but the most advanced sensors. In this condition they were like a ghost moving through space - the Ferengi would never know what hit them. Unless...? Peaceful solutions were possible - if given an ultimatum it just might happen that they gave up their booty.

"Scan for weapons" Dall`ek ordered while pondering upon this question.

Only formidable opponents deserved such warnings - his actions depended on the result of the scan.

"Electromagnetic pulse cannon, phasers and torpedoes. Their shield will be hard to penetrate" Sholax informed.

Dall`ek was a bit annoyed by the round description. Phasers and photon torpedoes came in all kinds of shapes and sizes, and "electromagnetic pulse cannon" was a definition that applied to both masers and lasers, two weapon-systems with very different qualities.

"Are they any match to us?" He tried again.

"Definitely, but their scanners are crude. I doubt if we will be detected"

Finally a clear response to his question.

"Hmm" Dall`ek drummed his fingers against the hard metal of his armrest.

Various thoughts, considerations and calculations rushed through his head. By the time he had landed on a decision, they were within weapons range.

"Hail them" He decided,

"Sir?" Sholax turned away from his console to face him. Dall`ek met his surprised gaze.

"Yes, hail them" He said slowly, his voice filled with determination and authority.

The Ferengi did not allow them to get a visual on their bridge or captain, but they did establish auditory contact.

"This is captain Dall`ek of "The Fist of Kahless", a Klingon bird of prey"

Dall`ek said. There was no response, so he continued:

"You have something that belong to us. Give it back or face the consequences"

"Go to hell Klingon scum!" A coarse, aggressive voice screamed through their speakers. It was unpleasant and sharp, much like the personality of the Ferengi species.

"A brave decision" Dall`ek approved, impressed by their commitment.

He would have thought that the Ferengi would try to bargain their way out of it, make some kind of dirty business-deal filled with tricks and deceit on their part. This was much better - more suitable for the Klingon temperament.

"End transmission" Dall`ek said, relieved that his half-hearted attempt at negotiations had failed.

"With your permission I would like to engage pursuit-pattern Kragh-2" Naq`Da suggested.

Kragh-2 was one of fifty-five different programs that the autopilot could be set to run on. Like the rest of them it was named after the programmer that had made it and first tested it in battle. Kragh-2 instructed the ship to maintain its pursuit in a wide jigsaw-like pattern that made them more difficult to hit, even if the enemy-scanners managed to overcome their cloak-generator. Unlike the outdated Kragh-1 it would also auto-adjust the course in order to avoid incoming energy-bolts and missiles, making it the ideal programming for hunting a fleeing enemy.

Dall`ek hesitated for a moment, waiting for the Ferengi to do something. They did not, speed and course was maintained.

"As you wish. Engage pursuit-pattern Kragh-2, shields up, fire at will" He then said, making the final call to send them into battle.

"Torpedoes or disruptors?" His weapons officer wondered.

"Disruptors off course, our torpedoes does not have warp-engines!" Dall`ek screamed, annoyed by the stupid question. His stupid weapons officer with the stupid tongue-bending name should have known this without being told. Argh! Youth today!

"At what part of the ship?" The annoying idiot continued.

"The aft-hull section, port or starboard side. Find the best to destroy their warp-engines" Dall`ek answered tiredly.

He was getting fed up. All those details, orders, technicalities and beeping consoles had completely drained him of energy. Now that they had finally engaged the enemy in glorious battle he simply lacked the surplus needed to enjoy it.

"Firing volley!" The weapons officer informed as the first two bolts rushed through space.

"About time!" Dall`ek roared while hitting his armrest.

Disruptor-cannons created distortions in space itself, much the same way as the warp-engines did. Therefore energy could be transmitted much faster than the speed of light, allowing Klingon birds of pray to use these weapons also during warp.

"Two direct hits!" Sholax screamed in ecstasy.

"Hurrah" Dall`ek responded with a flat, low voice.

His exhaustion prevented him from putting any real emotion into it, so it ended up sounding ironically - a form of humor that Klingons neither understood nor mastered.

The disruptor-bolts had slammed into the exterior energy-shield of the Ferengi-vessel, flashing up in two bright lights who caused billions upon billions of graviton particles to shake loose from the invisible forcefield that kept them in place above the hull. The amount of energy invested in these particles was considerable, so the disruptors ability to do this made them a excellent tool for shield-draining. A few more hits like this, and the shield would be completely obliterated, exposing the naked hull below to the elements. Even the strongest materials could not withstand direct contact with a Klingon disruptor-bolt. In Dall`ek's experience, it seldom happened that more than one successful shot was needed to neutralize a shield-less ship.

"Firing volley!" Sholax repeated.

At the very same moment, the Ferengi vessel started a steep dive. Both disruptor-bolts missed by several kilometers, continuing their path through space. Such bolts were both fast moving and unstable, so they disintegrating by them selves a few million kilometers ahead. When they had faded away, the Ferengi vessel climbed back up to its previous position.

"Enemy shields at 70% and rising" Sholax informed, a hint of anger in his voice.

"We need to get closer" Dall`ek stated.

Since they had successfully dodged their cannons one time, they could easily do so again. The only way to make their cannons count was to reduce the flight-time of their projectiles.

"Aye sir" Naq`Da confirmed, immediately passing on the order.

The reactor pit was not happy about this. Bad news regarding anomalies in the warp-core and related systems started ticking into Naq`Da's his console.

"Reactor pit hates us sir" He informed, a efficient way of summoning up their many worries.

"We have no choice, keep firing, try to foresee their evasive maneuvers!"

Since they now were firing at a moving target rather than a still one, Sholax adapted by reducing the size and energy-density of each bolt, that way reducing the recharging-time as well.

New bolts of disrupted space was spit out of the twin-barrels like bullets from a machine-gun. The erratic flight pattern used by the ferengies made them a hard target to hit, only a fraction of the bolts fired hit their shields. This changed gradually as the distance between them decreased. The aft shield was reduced to 60% and then 50% during ten seconds of intense firing.

"Keep at them!" Dall`ek screamed, filled with adrenaline and testosterone.

After the slow morning and the many nuisances that had followed since he took seat at the bridge, he had finally gotten himself into combat-modus, a aggressive and passionate mood that he found very enjoyable.

"We are running out of energy, both warp-core and fusion power is running at 100%" Sholax answered, making Dall`ek absolutely furious. Problems, problems, problems - everywhere he went. But this time he was determined no to let technical issues get in the way of his blood lust.

"Just kill them! Use up the batteries, turn of life-support, kill gravity in the crew-quarters, lower the shields if you have to, just rip those dirtbags to pieces!"

"Yes sir!" Sholax face split up in a wide, wicked grin.

Since several decisions now had been outsourced to him, Sholax was free to boss around some of the other bridge-officers. His first order was directed towards Kuula-Norr, an old and gray-haired Klingon who was rapidly approaching retirement.

"Kill gravity in crew compartments and reduce to 0,5 in main hallway and the lower deck"

Kuula-Norr sat to work, leaning his broad back over his console. Kuula-Norr was almost two hundred kiloes of raw muscle. In his prime years he had been a champion at close combat, probably capable of beating anyone in Dall`ek's current crew blindfolded. These days he seemed burdened down by his body, as if it was getting to heavy for him. Dall`ek figured that it was only a matter of a few years - if not months - before he would fail to follow the standard training-programs for the Klingon army. During their mountain run back at Tekk 3 he had lagged behind, the last one out of several similar incidents. Never the less, Dall`ek enjoyed having such an old and hardened officer at his bridge. The day he left them, would be a sad one indeed.

"Done!" He responded, a dark voice whose deep bass seemed to fill the room.

With gravity greatly reduced, Sholax pitched the emergency-batteries into their electricity-grid and reduced their shields. This last action was a bit risky even when cloaked and undetected, but it did the trick. The cannons kept spitting out disruptor-bolts, causing the enemy-shield to plunge towards critical levels.

"We have them!" Sholax screamed, high on the sweet smell of victory.

Unfortunately the gods did not seem to be in their favor today. A high-pitch alarm went of, sending its sharp siren through the room.

"Engine trouble! Serious!" Naq`Da screamed, his screen blinking in all the colors of the rainbow.

"Do what you must!" Dall`ek said.

Naq`Da took a brief look at his screen before he decided to interpret this order as a full stop. Reactor pit was a mess. The coolant-system was leaking, causing a massive temperature-rise within the anti-matter reaction chamber that kept the warp-core going. It would melt without cooling, and the cooling system could not be repaired while the chamber was active.

This simple truth meant that no technical cleverness or advanced console-operation could help them - shut-down was the only possible solution. When the streams of colliding matter and anti-matter inside the reaction-chamber was stopped, there was nothing left to heat the warp-plasma. The temperature started dropping, reducing the power transmitted to the nacelles, who in turn choked and died out. Their warp-bubble faded, gently returning them to normal space. At this point the Ferengi were long gone, but what if they turned about and came looking for them?

"Can we remain cloaked?" Dall`ek asked. With their warp-core and main power supply off-line, the table had turned to their disadvantage - a lousy time to emerge from hiding.

"If I shut everything else down, the fusion plant will have enough output to keep it going" Sholax informed.

"Do it, but keep gravity at the bridge and transporter-room" Dall`ek whispered nervously.

"It takes no energy what so ever to launch our photon-torpedoes. We are far from helpless" Naq`Da argued.

"But we have no shield-power, we will destroy each other!" Dall`ek hissed.

"If so, it is a good day to die!" Some moron in the back said. It was a old and very traditional Klingon slogan that was repeated frequently during combat. Quite frankly, Dall`ek was getting tired of it. He just wanted to do his job and protect Klingon territory without having to push loads of melodramatic clichés into it, and besides: Death could occur at good and bad days alike.

"Power can be redirected from cloak generator to shields at a moments notice, stay calm" Naq`Da advised.

"If the Ferengi find us we will use our torpedoes to bash in their shields, and then we will beam over the boarding-party to keep them busy." Kuula`Norr plotted.

Dall`ek concurred, the thoughts of the senior officer was turned into action. Naq`Da opened a channel to the transporter-deck were Jaakh and his men where standing, and then he gave a vocal order - telling them to stay vigilant and prepared for action. When done, Dall`ek had already thought up another task for him:

"Send in the repair team to fix that coolant-problem"

Minutes went by without any change in their situation. Dall`ek had no other orders to give, so he allowed silence to fall upon the bridge. The infinity tranquility out here between the stars was both odd and pleasant. It was a vast sea of emptiness that stretched on for light-years at every direction, or at least as long as their sensors could detect.

Half an hour passed by with the ship floating aimlessly through space at a velocity slightly below the speed of light. The bridge waited in inactive preparedness, there was still no sign of the Ferengi vessel. Dall`ek was getting hungry again. Even though it contained some calories, a cup of Raktajino was not enough breakfast for a big and robust man like him. His belly started growling, but he refused to get anything to eat before the coolant system had been fixed. As the captain on board, he could not allow himself to leave the bridge during a crisis, so he waited... and starved... and waited some more. The other bridge officers were getting restless as well, so when the good new arrived it caused much rejoicing.

"We had to replace a lot of parts, but now the coolant system is as good as new sir"

A boxy voice said through the cheering, Naq`Da had put it up on the main speaker.

"Excellent! Turn us about and head for our second set of coordinates, maximum warp!"

"What about the Ferengi?" Sholax wondered.

"Forget about them, they have probably found a asteroid-field or brown dwarf to hide in"

With this said, Dall`ek jumped out of his chair, setting course for the exit. Since his second in command Jaakh was missing, Naq`Da took over the command-chair. This left his console empty, but only the moment it took the guard by the door - the one that thought it was a good day to die - to walk over and sit down.

Dall`ek bumped into Jaakh at the other side of the entrance. He was on his way back to the bridge, but Dall`ek had other plans.

"Jaakh my man! Come have breakfast with me" He said while bumping his fist into his shoulder in a rough, yet friendly manner.

"You sound awfully happy for a man who just lost a pursuit" Jaakh answered.

"It doesn't matter, we gave them a good scare - I doubt if they will ever dare to return here"

"We better get some scalps at the other place, central command will not like it if our territory is violated unpunished!"

"Let's toast to that!" Dall`ek answered, confident that his next hunt would go better.


	10. Chapter 10: An unexpected visitor

Jonas had dropped out of warp and decelerated down to quarter impulse. Only a few million kilometers separated him from Outpost 32, so a further deceleration was needed before docking could begin. His present course was taking him above the red-gloving proto-planetarian disc, it was the same path he had traveled when he set out from the station six days earlier. Six days was a long time to stay within the narrow confinement of a F-class shuttle-hull, so he was looking forward to his return, even though Outpost 32 was pretty tight as well. He was still far away from visual contact when the computer decelerated him from quarter impulse to 5% impulse. In layman's terms that was 5% the speed of light, or approximately 15 000 kilometers a second. Outpost 32 was a very small target to aim in at, several minor course-corrections were needed to get him into the correct trajectory. The computer did all the work, but Jonas kept track of it, making sure the calculations made sense. Another burst from the impulse-engines slowed him down to seven kilometers a second, the proper speed for the this stage of the approach.

When the shuttle got within visual range of the outpost - having slowed down to almost a full stop in the process - Jonas got up from his seat to take a look at it through the small, rectangular windows that were positioned above the main monitor. Jonas liked to see things with his naked eye, even though the hull-cameras were a good substitution. They lacked depth perception though, and this was a good excuse for windows. The shuttle shook a bit during the next row of course-corrections and speed-reductions. The inertial dampeners were actually better at masking big changes in trajectory, then it was at the small ones. F-class shuttles could drop from full to zero impulse and up again without anyone noticing, but the delicate maneuvering into a docking bay or flight deck could be bumpy. The small navigational thrusters used were not connected to the dampening-system at all, so their full force could be felt directly on the body. Knowing that he was about to be shoved around, Jonas sat down again and buckled up for the docking-procedure.

Ioannis had ordered Jonas to dock with the cargo bay airlock rather than the to enter the flight deck. Instead of dragging it through the main corridor, Ioannis wanted to shuffle the iron ore directly into the containers he had prepared for it. That sounded fair enough, but before it could happen Jonas would have to confirm that everything was prepared. When the docking-clamps had secured their grip on the shuttle, he started working on the com-link. The attempt at reaching Ioannis on his communicator failed, so he established contact with the internal station-network instead. Once Ioannis was located, the transmission was moved to the wall-panel of the room he occupied. I beeped a few times before Jonas was let through.

"Outpost 32, you are speaking with the station captain" Ioannis said.

"Its me, Jonas. I'm back with the ore you requested"

"Oh, good. Dock with the cargo-bay, we are bringing the ore in."

Jonas had no problem completing that order. Fifteen minutes later he had secured the ship and emptied its storage room. Now he was walking into the stations cargo-bay, going through the same airlock tube that the iron ore had been sucked through a few minutes earlier.

"Welcome back ensign" Ioannis said while stretching out a hand to greet him.

His smile was sincere, genuine in its warmth. Jonas grabbed his hand and returned the smile. Ioannis handshake was a bit too firm, just as it had been when they had first met face to face over in the transporter room six days ago.

"Good to be back sir, I think you will be happy with the ore, according to my tricorder it is perfectly pure" Jonas boosted.

"I'm sure I will. Follow me, I have something to show you"

The energetic old man was in no mood for small-talk it seemed, not that the dark and cold storage-bay was a pleasant place to hang around. They moved on, leaving the big containers - now filled to the brink with ore - in favor of the bright and warm main corridor that awaited them the other side of the fire door. As it shut close behind them, a familiar figure approached at the left hand. It was that blue-skinned Bolian who Jonas had been introduced to when he first arrived at the station, but he could not remember his name. Fortunately Ioannis mentioned it when he came up to greet them.

"Zin, my man. How are things going with the new shuttle?"

"I'm proud to report that everything is ready" Zin answered happily.

"New shuttle?" Jonas asked, he had heard nothing of this.

"I need a lot more ore before I can build out that module, and since you are going to be tied up observing those aliens you found, I thought that it would come in handy with something extra" Ioannis explained.

"Wow, can I have a look?" Jonas answered intrigued.

"Lead the way Zin" Ioannis said.

The professor had other matters to attend to, so he left his two subordinates to it, heading in the opposite direction - probably towards his laboratory. At first Jonas took it for granted that they were heading for the flight-deck to check out the new shuttle, but Zin just walked on, continuing past the cross-section where they should have turned left. He was moving with fast, long strides just like Ioannis tended to do. Jonas had stayed behind him so far, but now he ran up to him to ask where they were heading.

"We are going to the waste-disposal and recycling-room" The eager Bolian answered without slowing down.

"Did you make a shuttle out of rubbish?" Jonas joked, curious and confused.

"Not exactly. We have this huge container that we use to ship our waste-products out to a safe distance. We installed the machinery left over from that other F-class shuttle into it, so now it has everything needed for a longer flight"

"Quite smart" Jonas agreed.

F-class shuttles were so darn small, in Jonas opinion they were way to small to be the only workhorse of a outpost so far from civilization. There were hundreds of good reasons to build something bigger.

"Yeah, I thought so too."

The room they were heading for was positioned right beside the transporter-room he had arrived at when beamed over from the Enterprise. Back then he had assumed that the boxy garbage pressurizer he passed by on his way through the appending room was the only type of waste-disposal machinery they had installed, but now he discovered that there was a small white door beside walked through it, ending up in a much bigger room at the other side. This room was even more densely populated with machinery and equipment than the rest of the station. Other than the water-recycler he had no idea what it all was - stuff like this had never been among his fields of interest at the academy.

"We manage to re-use most of the biological material, as well as simple materials like polyester and glass." Zen explained.

"I have heard that at the newest models of starships, they have managed to recycle even spent engine-parts, stuff like plasma injectors and such" Jonas answered.

He had overheard this from a conversation he had listened to while eating his breakfast at the Enterprise mess-hall.

"Yeah, you need some pretty advanced gear to do that, but they figured it was less heavy than it would be to bring with them a huge supply of spare parts." Zen said.

They made their way through the dense maze of machinery, ending up at a plot of empty floor-space in front of the reconfigured garbage-container. It was a rectangular gray box made out of a cheap material that Jonas failed to identify. It was definitely not standard duranium, and its grayness was to dark to be steel or aluminum... Plastic?

Jonas looked at it with deep skepticism.

Plastic would be okay for a automated vessel whose only function was to push rubbish away from the station. It would not give the proper shielding against radioactivity however, and it might be vulnerable to temperature fluctuations. Zin read his thoughts on the matter, immediately coughing up a reassuring counter-argument:

"I know what you think, but we reinforced it with a steel-grid, and we used one of the escape-pods to build its cockpit"

"Will it handle normal acceleration?" Jonas asked, still skeptical.

"Definitely. I managed to make a magnetic counter-force system that keeps the inner steel-grid stable. It did fine one the test runs, zero to full impulse at twenty minutes"

"Still a bit slow, but within acceptable perimeters" Jonas agreed.

"Not to mention the voyage home. How many tons of ore can you keep in there?" He added after a slight pause.

"Don't know, I haven't done the math on that yet" Zin shrugged his shoulders.

Now that they were done with the techno-babble, it was time to take a closer look at the vessel. Jonas walked up to it's left nacelle, a slender cylinder that looked too short and small for the long bulkhead that it was screwed on to.

"It's not pretty, but it will do." Zen claimed.

"Let's take a look inside" Jonas answered while walking towards a rectangular opening that was carved out of the thick layer of plastic.

A metal plate was added on the inside, it slid open when they approached - a exterior sensor connected to the door had probably detected Zin's communicator. Jonas expected to walk into a empty storage-room with a console in one end and two impulse-engines at the back, but he did not. The blue-skinned alien had been a busy little bee, filling the usually empty bulk of the ship with things and equipment. The iron ore would be teleported into four big silos that created a intersection around the small and cylinder-shaped warp-core who stood out from the floor at the center of the ship. This too, was taken from the F-class shuttle where it usually stayed hidden behind the back wall of the living-section. The tanks of deuterium and anti-deuterium that fueled everything on board were welded into the ceiling above the engines, two thick cables connected them to the reaction-chamber above the warp-core. Traditionally all this equipment would be placed on the floor were it could be easily accessed, but since Zen needed as much idle space as possible for the silos it was better to use the ceiling as well. Very rational indeed, but was it safe?

"How do you plan to reach the reaction chamber if you need to make repairs?"

Jonas asked.

"The cockpit up front is the only place with gravity-plating, so I won't need a ladder"

"Aha"

"Let me show you the cockpit" Zin said.

They walked past the silos and the warp-core, heading up to the front wall. Here the various sensor systems were lined up against both sides of the shock-white, ball-shaped escape-pod that had been bolted to the floor. Zin walked up to it and pushed the button that opened the small door. The tiny propulsion-engine that such pods usually were equipped with had been removed - the exit-holes for the nozzle welded shut. A space-suit was lying inside the square-shaped opening it had left behind.

"This pod is the only place in the ship with a oven, so it might get pretty cold outside. Its best to keep the suit in here" Zin explained.

The tiny cockpit was too small to stand up straight, Jonas had to curl his neck to avoid hitting his head against the low ceiling. It felt a bit like standing inside a football, the white walls curved around them in a semi-circle that seemed threatening to begin with. Jonas could not help imagine that they might cave in on them.

"Care to try a Bolian slush? It's my favorite snack" Zin asked as he sat down on the small couch behind the pilots-seat.

There was hardly enough space for two there, so Jonas went for the pilots-seat instead. He turned it around so that it faced Zin rather than the now-dead console, and sat down.

"Do you call it Bolian slush among Bolians, or only slush?" He wondered.

Zin smiled at him. The blue skin highlighted the whiteness of his teeth.

"Aha, good one. Only slush."

Jonas hesitated to accept Zin's offer. What if he was about to serve something horrible that he could not eat? You never knew what you might end up with when agreeing to test out an alien dish, and should he refuse, Jonas risked offending the host.

"Care to try?" Zin asked again.

"Bring it on" Jonas decided after a few seconds of hesitation.

He didn't want to look like a chicken, and if he was lucky it might not be all that bad.

The food synthesizer was strategically positioned at the right side of the pilots console, well within reach as long as one was willing to rotate the chair a bit. Zin fetched two white cups from the cupboard it was resting upon and put them into the hatch of the machine. Upon feeling the extra weight from the cups, it activated itself.

"Please input command" A soft, feminine voice said through its speaker.

Unlike the synthesizer in the mess hall at the station, the ones installed into shuttles and escape-pods didn't have slots for food-cards, only voice-command.

"Two Bolian Slush. Type Zeter-I"

The light "pling" that followed meant that his exotic order had been accepted and understood. For psychological reasons a metal plate was lowered over the hatch while working. Some psychologists believed that it could make certain people feel that they ate nothing but air if they actually saw the meal materialize, so in order to avoid the binge-eating that might follow from such a misconception, the production-process was concealed. What happened at the other side of the metal curtain was in fact very similar to normal teleportation. The synthesizer teleported the basic components of food out of the mini-freezer behind the machine, and then it put them together in a different molecular pattern on the plate or cup, heating everything up to the correct temperature in the process.

"Pling!" the machine said again, this time telling them that the meal was ready.

The metal plate retracted, revealing the same two cups. This time they were filled with pink, alien slush with something yellow sticking out of it... Dead worms? Zin took two spoons from the cupboard and jammed them into the substance before handing one of them over to Jonas. Unlike human slush, this one came with a sharp, spicy smell.

"Human slush is mostly water-ice, artificial color and sugar" Jonas informed while looking sceptically at his meal. The pink stuff looked okay, the dead worms on the other hand...

"Sounds boring. These ones are made from the fat of Yngui-beasts, accompanies by sugar and other spices, The yellow things are Uuri-worms, they are supposed to be alive, but the synthesizer can't do that"

Having told him this, Zin swallowing his first spoon-full, seemingly enjoying it - and expecting Jonas to do the same.

Jonas tried to convince himself by thinking that the worse thing that could happen was that it tasted really, really foul, and that this was a acceptable risk to take in the name of cultural exchange and open-mindedness. What would be the point of venturing into space if he refused? - He might as well have stayed at home.

Having built up the necessary courage, he gathered a small amount of the pink stuff at the tip of his spoon - carefully avoiding the worms. He had no idea what to expect when he put it in his mouth, except for the anticipation that it would taste a lot - he had heard that Bolian food usually did. It was quite spicy indeed, but in a weird way, different from Earth-style spiciness. The sugar-sweetness mixed well with the other... things, and... Hm - Good, it tasted good.

"I like it" Jonas concluded, a hint of surprise in his voice.

"Glad you do" Zin answered pleasantly.

A brief pause followed as Zin dug into his slush - worms and everything. Jonas was in no mood to talk about himself at the moment, not when he had an alien filled with exotic experience and knowledge sitting right next to him. Fearing that the alien might think the same thing, he took advantage of the pause created by Zin's appetite to start an inquiry.

"So what did you do before you joined starfleet?" He asked while Zin was busy chewing the worms.

"I worked at a Bolian transport ship carrying settlers from our home-planet to one of the colonies" Zin answered between two mouthfuls.

"Big?"

"All our transport ships are big, three thousand passengers on a two month journey, in addition to a lot of other cargo off course" He said while eating.

"Sounds cool" Jonas answered, quite impressed.

If what Zin was telling was true, this transport-ship of his was way bigger than anything used by the federation - three thousand settlers in one ship was nothing less than a mind-blowing technical achievement. While thinking about it, Jonas filled another spoon with pink stuff - still avoiding the worms.

"Yeah, it's okay. I have spent most of my life on board. School, work and everything. As I'm sure you understand, I was pretty experienced by the time I signed up on this academy of yours." Zin continued.

"You can't work in starfleet without it" Jonas answered

He got a feeling that Zin had a lot more practical experience with space than what he had, that he perhaps knew most of the things their courses had to offer even before enlisting.

"Yeah, but you should make it possible for people to drop by and take the final exams without having to go through all that obligatory stuff" Zin opined.

Jonas had no opinions on this matter, so Zin shifted subject:

"Another problem is that you Humans scatter your self over too many planets. You might not have the military means to defend all of it in a military conflict"

"We will find out I guess, latest news is that the Klingon empire is mobilizing against us"

"Precisely"

Eventually, Jonas got back into his shuttle again - but this time he had company. Zin was flying behind him in the refitted garbage container that they had named "Donatello 2". Acceleration had been slow, even slower than the twenty minute estimate made by Zin. It had taken 35 full minutes to accelerate Donatello 2 up to full impulse, Jonas had been hanging patiently behind through the whole process. Since then, full warp had been established, and Jonas had found the the time needed to enjoy a nice English breakfast. Unhealthy as it might be, it was still one of the few things that the food synthesizer was very good at.

The stars were stretched into long, fine lines of white as they moved towards him. At this speed it looked as if they formed a tunnel of light around the shuttle. The shuttle was not really going that fast, a small portion of the forward view was magnified and distorted by the warp-bubble - causing the illusions of fast-moving stars. Jonas watched the spectacle for a few more minutes before he got fed up with it. He turned off the forward monitor, replacing the image with dead blackness.

"No screen-saver?" - He thought - "How boring"

Since it was named after a painter, Jonas thought about finding something that the original Donatello had made, maybe a slide-show of his images. A short sweep through the memory-bank caused him to abandon this idea. Donatello's preference for dramatic religious motives and strong colors made it exhausting to look at.

Instead, Jonas ended up with the most common screen-saver possible. The big spaceships of starfleet where visually attractive, both the widely used constitution-class, and the more experimental excelsior-class. The federation seemed to like grand designs, the saucer-section of both types were always well over a hundred meters wide, several hundred meters long and capable of holding a lot of people. Expensive as it might be, this also made starfleet vessels very versatile and quick to adapt to new challenges. On ships such as the Enterprise there were experts of every kind, and this was good for problem-solving. Many other species, such as for example the Klingons, had much smaller and more modest ships who focused primarily on speed and firepower. This gave greater military strength for less resources, but the drawback was a much more narrow expertise that usually was limited to finding good ways to blow things up. Jonas found starfleet ships more esthetically pleasing than the small "birds of prey" - as they called them - used by the enemy.

With the screen-saver on, Jonas could spend the rest of the journey looking at famous federation spaceships. Big names such as "USS Intrepid", "USS Constellation" and "USS Excalibur" passed by, followed by a bunch of less important ones. The prefix "USS" was a abbreviation that stood for "United Star Ship", meaning that its captain was chosen by starfleet command, and therefore followed orders from the United Earth council. If Jonas had understood it correctly, the United Earth council ruled Earth as well as the United Federation of Planets, a much larger body that made sure universal rights, democracy and other things were upheld by the member-planets. But thinking about it, it could also be the other way around, that the United Federation of Planets controlled the United Earth council as well as starfleet, the military and exploratory organization that he himself had just entered. Jonas mind was a bit foggy on such things, even though it had been repeated several times in school, and even at the starfleet academy. The important thing was that everybody was happy with it, Humans and aliens alike. Forming such a strong military and civilian alliance among such a huge variety of intelligent life-forms had been no easy task. It was nothing less then a miracle that it had at all been possible. The first people who had proposed this thing had been ridiculed as unrealistic dreamers, naive and stupid hippies who did not understand the hard realities of interstellar conflict.

Thinking about starfleet and how little he knew about the organizations who bossed them around made Jonas feel unhappy and ignorant. Perhaps he should spend some of his idle hours in this tin-can to re-learn it? See if he could memorize it properly this time? - That was a good idea indeed. Jonas walked over to the mattress he was planning to sleep on in twelve hours or so, and opened the bag beside it. His reading-pad was hidden between some nicely folded uniform-shirts. He took it up and walked back to the pilots chair while opening its archive. It didn't have anything on United Earth Council or the United Federation of Planets though, probably because he had erased a lot of his old starfleet curriculum in order to make space for more movies, music, and pilot-related literature. He plugged it into the shuttle-databank instead, pretty certain that its library would have what he looked for. It proved to be a correct assumption, a quick search left him with numerous texts on the subjects. He picked out two of them, and copied them over to his pad. Their names were: _"Juridical rights and restrictions regarding the United Federation of Planets"_ and _"United Nations, past present and future"_

Reading this stuff became even dryer and more energy-draining than he thought it would be, so he was happy when a subspace-message ticked into his console. It was sent from Enterprise, and when he scrolled through the log, Jonas discovered that the same caller had tried to reach him a few hours earlier as well. He had been sleeping back then, and when the computer woke him up, he had been thrown right into the docking-procedure. It was the Enterprise, and the signal originated from the outskirts of the Nibulus system. They had stayed there for over a week now, Jonas was starting to worry if they had ran into some kind of serious trouble.

The message was recorded by Kirk himself. He was sitting behind his desk at the captain's ready room, a office of sorts, that was located close to the bridge on all starfleet vessels.

"Good morning" Kirk said, looking seriously into the camera of his laptop.

"The graveyard-shift tried to reach you for a live transmission"

He was leaning forward, his arms rested on the smooth black surface of his desk.

"But you did not answer, so I'm sending this tape."

Jonas found it kind of cool that the captain of such a big starship was calling him personally. But what for? If he was planning to drop by Outpost 32 again he would call Ioannis, and if Jonas was called out to assist the Enterprise in any way, Ioannis would make the call instead of him being hailed by Kirk directly. He could not think of any situation that would require direct contact between him and the Enterprise captain.

"It seems" Kirk paused for a moment to have a sip of tea.

"That your research object have gotten them selves into trouble"

Jonas straightened himself up in the chair, preparing for bad news. He had really enjoyed spying on those folks, and he was hoping that he would get to spy some more on this second round - perhaps even initiate first contact.

"Their ship have taken serious damage, and phaser residue found in the area suggests that they have been attacked by another ship"

Jonas sighed. He had kind of liked their ship, very old-school in its layout. It reminded him a bit of those old exploration ships used by humans during the twenty-first century. If it had been destroyed, then he would have lost a unique chance to see history repeating itself. If those folks made it all the way to their destination it would be comparable to having witnessed first humans to land on Saturn's moon Titan, or maybe more like the landing on Jupiter's Europa a few years earlier.

"The situation is stable, the aliens have evacuated the main ship in favor of the landing-shuttle and a single module that they have attached to its belly. Our scans show that their atmosphere and water-recyclers are working, and that they have taken with them enough food for about six more months in space."

The good news made Jonas smile. Everything was under control - no stress.

"However" Kirk continued, dragging Jonas back into his previous state of anxiety.

"They will soon run into a dense asteroid-field in high orbit around the class-8 gas giant they are aiming for."

New sip of tea, Kirk looked dully into the camera while drinking.

"Our calculations show that it will hit them in two weeks, and since their radar and other long-range sensors were destroyed in the attack, they have no way of knowing what's coming."

Jonas had heard enough to get the bigger picture - that help was needed and that it was his duty to deliver. It was after all, he that had attached a sub-space beacon to their hull, that way marking them as his research-project. He should be happy that the Enterprise and its captain did not wish meddle into his affairs more than needed, even though the weight of responsibility had gotten quite big for his inexperienced shoulders. It took no genius to understand that to rescue the explorers would not end with simply rescuing the explorers. He would also have to bring them home, talk to their leaders, explain the situation. Who knew? Perhaps he would be the first alien they had ever met? If so he would make himself a part of their history-books for millenniums to come.

While Jonas fantasized about the future, Kirk continued his monologue:

"And even if they manage to get unharmed through the asteroid-shower, the trip home is too long for them. Regardless which one of the inner planets they sat out from. Death is certain if we do nothing."

Reading between the lines, it was clear that Kirk really wanted him to save those people, but protocol never the less compelled him to deliver a heavy-weighing argument against such an action:

"A rudimentary scan we have done of their home world indicates that this is a pre-warp civilization, and that any tampering with the chain of events leading to their deaths must..."

Kirk hesitated, uncertain on how to express his thoughts on the matter. He looked down into the table for a moment, knocking it gently with his hand while thinking. When he looked into the camera again, he seemed clearly uncomfortable with talking to a empty screen - communication without immediate response was always a bit tricky.

"Just keep a low profile okay? Find a way to push them back home without being seen or heard more than necessary"

Kirk was about to round off, but before saying goodbye he transmitted several sets of numbers to the shuttle's computer-core. These chunks of info represented the precise course, speed and heading of the alien vessel.

"Good luck, Kirk out"

"No problem" Jonas whispered to himself.

Then he wrote a short answer, thanking Kirk for the heads-up. With the numbers plotted into his navigational program, a rather interesting image appeared on his star-chart. With their ridiculously low speed of only a handful kilometers a second, the aliens would use several weeks to pass through even a single square on the charter - at maximum zoom! In modern starfleet-jargon this hardly qualified as momentum when outside an atmosphere or not undergoing docking-procedure. It would go as either "full stop" or alternatively "dead stop" if the ship was wounded. For the aliens however, this was probably the most they could squeeze out of their propulsion engine, making it "full impulse" in their language.

Jonas got tired of thinking about numbers, so he got up to take a walk around the narrow confinement of his cabin. When he had stretched his legs, he felt like taking a leak, so he walked into the small bathroom that had been installed in the end of the room. It had everything he needed to stay fresh, but in order to make it as space-efficient as possible, several modifications had been added that that deviated it from the traditional layout of such rooms. It lacked a shower-stall, and the shower head was hanging down from the middle of the ceiling. In order to not fill up with water while showering, the sink could be tipped backwards, into the wall. The cramped little room had - not surprisingly - a mirror installed into the wall above the sink. Jonas could see his own image in it. His hair was all messed up, and he had a three-day beard.

The computer of his ship had been mean with him since he started on this job, waking him up several times a night to terrorize him with subtle changes in the warp-bubble, gravimetric distortions, increased anti-matter output, and a number of other trivialities that could easily have waited until morning. Starfleet computer expected everything to go according to a set of precise mathematical predictions, and since even slight deviations made them worry, the Human element was often summoned to look things over, reassure the computer that everything was safe and fine. It felt a bit as living together with an anxious old aunt, and aunt who only spoke in numbers, graphs and howling alarms. It was an aunt that never ever slept, and didn't expect others to do so either. The lifestyle that the computer forced him into didn't care much for things like 24-hour days and night-cycles, so the difference between night and day had gotten pretty blurry. Unlike most bigger installations, the F-class shuttles weren't designed with lights that shifted color and intensity throughout the day - Jonas had only his watch to rely on.

Having finished his business in the bathroom, Jonas followed the dual beeping sound of his com-link back to the console. One of the alarms was Zin trying to reach him, the other one was the navigational system, probably warning about an approaching object.

"Jonas here" Jonas said, opening the com-link without sitting down.

"It occurs that something is heading for us" Zin told him.

"It's on my screen as well. It's still to far away to get a proper sensor-reading and..." Jonas stopped his sentence midway, instead focusing on new incoming data. What had been discovered was not physical, but rather a disturbance in space itself. Such disturbances were not restricted to light-speeds and below, it was rushing towards them faster than any particle or physical entity could have done. According to the computer it would be on top of them in less than five minutes, and it also warned that they risked being pulled apart if they got in its way. Most such phenomena were caused by starships at warp, but they could also occur naturally. At the academy they had been thought that certain objects such as supernovas and heavy stars in tight orbit around each other could produce similar types of dense gravimetric distortion-bolts as starships did.

"It might be a big ship" Zin analyzed, thinking that they might be looking at a kind of warp-bubble.

"Might be, but we should get out of the way first, and find out later" Jonas answered.

He felt no need to wait for Zin to agree with this self-evident course of action. He rapidly moved his ship 90 degrees to starboard and engaged the impulse-engines, pushing the ship into a evasive maneuverer.

Having shifted his course, Jonas stabilized the engine at warp 5. Now that he was moving into safety, he had his hands free to focus on his sensor-array. He was hoping that a deeper and more thorough scan would reveal the nature of the wave - whether it was artificial, or a force of nature. It took little time for the scanners to confirm that there was indeed a piece of solid mass in there, a object that created the wave. Getting a accurate sensor-reading was impossible due to the distortions that protected it from scrutiny, and since the object was moving several times faster than the speed of light, getting a clear visual was impossible as well. The computer however, knew tricks that could compensate for such difficulties. As the shuttle hasted away from the mysterious object, exotic sensors and complex programs did their best to create a useful image.

"Oh crap!" Jonas thought, not believing his own eyes.

What appeared on his screen was a Klingon bird of prey! No doubt about it! Despite its blurriness, it was easy to recognize the characteristic features of the enemy. Hull in metallic green, long neck and stub front-section, as well as the broad wings that ended in the warp-nacelles at the back. The warp-field created was way too big for the ship, some kind of malfunction kept it from focusing properly. Instead of a clearly defined bubble, the warp-nacelles made a huge and unfocused field that was more like a tidal-wave than a bubble. It was big enough for several ships to surf in, and as such it was a massive waste of energy.

Further scans revealed that the enemy ship was traveling at warp 3, that was half the normal cruising speed for this type of ship. This finding strengthened the theory of a malfunction, so why did they not stop to make repairs? The Klingons were obviously in a hurry, and they were heading for federation space? Their course ran parallel with his and Zin's warp-trail, meaning that they were heading straight for... God damn! Outpost 32!

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

Jonas slammed his fist as hard as he could into the the console panel responsible for bringing up all these bad news. Luckily it was built solid, capable of taking quite a beating. The image on the screen was still in perfect working order when he re-connected with Zin.

"Did they take a shot at you?" He asked first.

Due to the sluggish nature of his ship, Zin had fallen behind, putting him in greater risk.

"No, I'm fine. Was there a ship in there?"

"Yeah, and guess what: It's a bird of prey, and it's heading straight for the outpost!"

Zin went silent for a second, overwhelmed by the grave nature of the situation.

"But Outpost 32 is unarmed!" He protested, shock and horror in his voice.

"Yeah, and its the neutral zone, and the Klingon have no legal rights to attack and all that." Jonas answered, giving the short version of the rules and regulations valid for this part of space, rules that also the Klingons had agreed to follow - at least on paper.

"No need for a lecture, I will warn the station, you call Enterprise and tell them to get here as fast as possible" Zin said, attempting to take control over the situation.

"On it!" Jonas ended the transmission.

There was no time to loose.


	11. Chapter 11: Skirmish

Meanwhile, quite a few light-years away, Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the starship Enterprise was in his quarters, preparing to record his captains log. This routine was something all starfleet captains had to go through on a almost daily basis, but Kirk was fresh in the game, still not accustomed to these monologues. The last couple of days had been eventful, so many things had happened, and they had learned a lot. So where to begin? Captain Kirk walked aimlessly around in his room, trying to form a good sentence to start with. He needed a good intro, followed by a short yet precise explanation of what it was they had been doing. According to starfleet, a good captains log should be a round description that gives the reader an accurate idea about the nature of the new data that has been recorded, analyzed and stored - comparable perhaps, to the index of a book. Despite lacking a clear plan, he ordered the computer to start recording, jumping right into it:

"Captains log, stardate 1312.3"

He read of the digital calender at his desk. He took a deep breath before he continued:

"_While exploring a asteroid-field at the outskirts of the Nibulus system, A heavy G-class star within the Neutral Zone, we have made several intriguing discoveries. We have found and stored several single-celled organisms who feed upon the minerals, water-ice and frozen gas within the asteroid-rocks, and we have met a alien species who call them selves the Mantesians. Communication was a bit rocky at first, as it always is with first-contact situations. Luckily the Mantesians were both friendly and service-minded, so they sent us instructions on how to learn their language. I was pleased to see that Lieutenant Uhura - our communications officer - was up to the job, one day and one night was all it took her to crack the code, and install a functional translation-program into the universal translator."_

Captain Kirk felt his mouth go dry, so he asked the computer to stop the recording.

He went into the bathroom to get some tap-water. It was not so long since breakfast, and he still did not feel fit-for-fight. While splasing som extra water over his face in an attempt to freshen up, he ordered his thoughts, forming a rough plan on what to include and what to drop out of his log.

"Continue the recording" He said when he got back out.

The computer beeped, it was its way of telling him that the tape was rolling.

"_So who are these Mantesians? According to them selves they have lived in space for several millenniums. They are humanoid in shape, and they seem to have adapted themselves for a life in zero G. Their ship is self-sustained, equipped with everything it needs to produce its own food and its own fuel, as well as recovering from injuries. The Mantesians mine everything they need from asteroids and small uninhabited planets. As mentioned before, the Mantesians have not invented, or have no need for gravity-plating. They find it odd that so many other species make themselves dependent upon this technology even for longer stays in space, and when conversing their captain, he said that we should do as they have done, adapting our selves genetically so that we can dwell in space without depending on advanced and energy-draining technology."_

"Computer, stop recording!"

Kirk became uncertain for a moment. - Was such detailed information about their views on gravity-plating was unsuitable for a captains log? Should he drop it out? Would it help the listeners form a overall picture of who that Mantesians were? He concluded that it would, so he resumed without deleting anything of the previous entry.

"_Also, the Mantesians have never evolved warp-drive. Their propulsion-system is composed of many ion-accelerators that together gives the ship enough momentum to slowly climb it up to almost full impulse. Their captain - who I have spent several days with, and now consider a friend of mine - says that warp-speed is unnatural, that there is something fundamentally wrong with bending space in order to get around faster. - that we are, in a way - cheating" _

Kirk paused for a second, but he didn't ask the computer to stop recording. His captains log was almost complete, but before rounding off he felt like adding a bit more technical data:

"_The Mantesian ship is forty kilometers long and five kilometers tall and wide, giving it a interior space of 750 square kilometers, something that makes it the largest spaceship ever encountered by starfleet. It contains seven smaller mining-ships that can be sent down to low-gravity planets or asteroids to harvest oxygen and carbon dioxide for them selves and their farms, hydrogen for their fusion-power plant, and minerals for hull-maintenance. Their rather primitive engine-technology in combination with overall skepticism towards large masses keeps them away from bigger planets. They are equipped with several powerful beam weapons, both phasers, masers and lasers. According to them selves there are several other Mantesians ships in the Alpha quadrant." _

And this was not the only memorable event that had taken place during the last couple of days. What else was there? Kirk searched his mind, trying to recall that other events that were worthy of starfleet's attention. That he had beat Spock in multi-level chess again? Nope, that was a personal matter. That he suspected doctor Bones was not only bitter and depressed, but also a alcoholic? Not that either, that was a strictly work-related problem with no scientific value... Something about that freshman he had dropped of at the outpost, he had called them up again from within the Nibulus system and... Aha.

The pause had gotten way too long by now, so he had a minute or so to delete from the entry. But first he had to round it of:

"_I'm also proud to report that we have detected signs of a second civilization further into the system. A small spaceship was found by a shuttle sent out from Outpost 32. The ship it detected is moving too slow and is too small to have originated from interstellar space. Its course and angle suggests that it was sent out from the fourth or third planet in the system. Further exploration of the inner planets will reveal which one and perhaps allow us to establish contact. Unfortunately, this will not be done by the Enterprise. Starfleet command have made a tight schedule for us, we have a lot of space to explore, and we are already behind schedule. Tomorrow we are departing, leaving this place for another star, which name I can not remember. - Kirk out"_

That last part of the entry got rather sloppy, unfit for a professional captains log. He would have to come back to it once he had found out the name of that star, and re-do the last bit. Could it wait for tomorrow? Nah, it was better to get to it straight away - otherwise he might just forget about it, and by that time he might have another captains-log to produce. His reading-pad was lying at the desk in front of him, right next to the log-recorder that was built into the dark wood. It would take him little time to turn it on and look up their schedule, find out about their plans for the morning. A good captain always knew what waited behind the next corner, prepared and ready for any danger and...

The doorbell rang. Since it responded to vocal commands, Kirk did not have to get up from his chair and open it manually. He simply said "enter" to make it retract into the wall. Hikaru Sulu was standing on the other side. Despite having both Asian features and a foreign-sounding name, the man spoke perfect English. According to himself he was from San Francisco, a US citizen just like Kirk. Americans were slightly overrepresented on board, even though Starfleet was supposed to be not only an international, but also an intergalactic organization. At the bridge they had a Russian navigator and a Vulcan science officer, so that was multicultural enough. - And then there was Scotty the Scotsman leading the work down in engineering. Other than that, it seemed like starfleet drew a lot of its lower ranking personnel from the US only. This had perhaps something to do with the fact that they had managed to get its headquarter to San Francisco. Before starfleet, Kirk had spent most of his youth in the a backward colony named Tarsus IV, so he was not that patriotic, but it was very convenient that English - the language he had grown up with - was obligatory to master within the organization.

"You wanted me sir?" Sulu asked.

"I need a good plan on how to take out the Klingon ship" Kirk told Sulu, not asking him to sit down.

"Sure, All I need is the time and place" Sulu said.

"They are most probably at the Outpost" Kirk answered.

"I will make a full stop in good time. Then I will send out a probe to check if they are there, and if so, I will have a good plan ready - I promise" Sulu smiled broadly while talking, his confidence was reassuring.

"Sounds good" Kirk said, returning the smile.

Sulu headed back to the bridge, Kirk remained seated. When the door had slid shut, he rotated his chair away from the desk. Kirk found the sight of space moving to be relaxing, so he was grateful for the viewport that had been installed in his ready-room. From this angle the stars looked like slow moving laser-beams passing by. Then the ship dropped put of warp, quickly returning them their original form. The already soft and dim humming of the engines below lowered to a near-silence. It didn't last long though. The com-link - that as well, was built into the desk - started whistling, compelling Kirk to turn around and get back to work.

"Spock to Kirk" The caller said.

"Kirk here"

"We have located the scientists from the outpost, permission to bring them in?"

"Permission granted"

Sine he was already up on his feet, and since there was no more planning to do for the time being, Kirk walked out and returned to his seat at the bridge. By the time he got there, the shuttles in question were already up on the main monitor. One F-class shuttle at the front, closely followed by an unidentified boxy looking vessel. They were descending in between the two warp-nacelles, aiming for the shuttle-bay in the aft-section of the ship.

"Are you sure both these are starfleet vessels?" Kirk asked.

The way he saw it, the one lagging behind was way to ugly to be anything made by starfleet.

"Quite certain, we ran a full scan" Spock replied.

"Intriguing." Kirk answered.

"According to the technical scan it's a..." Spock was about to say something more about the properties of the second ship, but he was cut short by an incoming message.

"The front ship is hailing us sir" Uhuru said.

"On screen" Kirk demanded.

It was that Jonas-guy again, the one with the exact same name as one of Scotty's men down in engineering. Fascinating as this might be, they never the less looked very different. This Jonas had a longer, more slender face. He was also a few years younger. During Kirk's last conversation with him not so long ago he had been as smooth-skinned as protocol demanded, bu now he was unshaven and bewhiskered. Also, his hair was a bit too unruly - those outpost-people were way more relaxed than starship personnel on such matters.

"I have new info regarding Outpost 32" Jonas said.

The autopilot was fine-tuning the approach for him, so he could grant his full attention to Kirk and the others at the bridge.

"I'm all ears" Kirk answered.

"Outpost 32 have been destroyed" He said.

Grave as this news might be, the event did not come as a surprise for anyone in the room - no dramatic gasping, no lifted eyebrows or open mouths.

"And what about the crew" Kirk wondered.

"The crew have evacuated. They are floating away from the explosion on a peace of debris, but you wont be able to spot them using a bio-scan"

"Dead?"

"They were still alive when I talked to them five minutes ago"

"If they can be reached on sub-space, it should be possible to lock on to their signals and beam them over" Kirk reasoned.

"Yes, but time is short. If the Klingons detects them, they are dead meat"

"We will return to warp the second you touch down at flight-deck, Kirk out"

* * *

><p>Soon after, the two shuttles landed at the yellow squares assigned to them on the flight deck. This deck was completely empty, like a supermarket warehouse with no goods. Jonas could see the silhouette of a man looking down at them from within the protective glass-wall of the observation-post that filled the inner wall. Jonas found it odd that that the flight deck was so empty. - Wasn't Enterprise supposed to have several F-class shuttles? An answer of sorts was given to him when the platform he and his shuttle rested on started to sink into the floor. He rotated the hull camera around towards Zin's ship, confirming that the same thing was happening to him. The floor-space outlined by the yellow squares were actually large elevator-platforms that lowered them down to the deck below. Jonas made a qualified guess, thinking that their system was similar to that of an air-craft carrier, one deck for launch &amp; landing, one for maintenance and storage. As the shuttle descended into the dark and small garage below, Jonas ears picked up the welcoming sound of the warp-core engaging. The flight-deck was much closer to the engine-compartment, so down here it was a deep, almost primordial roar.<p>

With the shuttle safely parked, Jonas hasted to the exit, teaming up with Zin out in the corridor.

"What warp-factor do you think we are holding?" Zin asked, feeling the floor vibrating under his boots.

"Judging on the sound I would say warp 6, but we are a bit more shaky than usual, so the captain might be pushing us higher. I'd guess 6,7" Jonas opined.

As soon as they rounded the corner they were stopped by a rather ordinary looking fellow who had been sent to greet them. He was wearing a yellow jumpsuit, the uniform of the engine-crew.

"Hello there" He said in a jolly tune.

"Good morning" Jonas replied.

"I was ordered to take you to the arrival lodge, please follow me"

The arrival lodge seemed to be starfleet's answer to an airport gate. The same kind of seats were lined up around the walls, and it also had a minimalistic white cup-board with all the necessary eating-gear, should one feel like ordering something from the food-synthesizer in the corner.

"Does this place have a screen?" Jonas asked their new host.

The feature-less room was completely devoid of personality. Since they might be stuck there for a while, they needed something more than just the white wall to rest their eyes on.

"Not at the moment, but I can have one brought into you" He answered in a polite and service-minded manner.

"Can you get one with a up-link to the outer hull camera-grid? we want to follow the events if we head into battle"

"On it, just stay put"

The yellow jumpsuit left them, Zin walked over to the cup-board and took out a glass. After placing it into the hatch of the synthesizer, he mumbled a series of strange and unrecognizable words, probably Bolian. The machine responded by spitting out a long and sour beep, as if it had been offended in some way.

"I don't think they have Bolian drinks programmed into that thing, your kitchen isn't all that popular among humans" Jonas told him.

"I know. Before leaving my homeworld, I stored some of my favorite meals on a disc, that's why the synthesizer back at Dontatello 2 knows how to make Bolian slush"

"Well, you can always go back to the shuttle and fetch it" Jonas proposed.

"Cant do, it blew up with the Outpost"

Zin dropped back down in his seat with a sigh, somewhat disappointed over the food-synthesizer and life in general. The arrival lodge was depressive, but it helped a lot when the yellow uniform returned, just as jolly and service-minded as he had been during their first encounter. He was carrying a reeled up flat-screen under his right arm. It looked kind of like a gigantic scroll of papyrus, main difference being that it was white on the outside and black at the inside.

"Help me get the sheet of" he said while putting it down on the floor.

The white side of the screen had a protective layer of plastic that kept the glue beneath in place. When taken of it could be rolled directly on to the wall the same way you would do with a sheet of wallpaper.

"You know what" He said while working "This was a good idea, now our guests won't get bored while waiting"

"You said it" Zin agreed.

"Anyway: The screen is touch-sensitive, and I have programmed it so that all the exterior cameras can be accessed, as well as the movies and documentaries in our library. You can't rotate or zoom with them though, image-control remains at the bridge" He explained.

"Okay, thanks" Jonas said.

"Got to run, I'm needed in engineering. See you guys around"

Their eager helper rushed out the door, heading back down to the plasma-relays, warp-core, antimatter streamers, and the rest of the dangerous stuff that was needed to push the ship through space. In the earlier days of starfleet, the radiation created in the process had been impossible to contain. The engine-crews had walked around in thick space-suits, working in rooms that nobody cared to pressurize because they were too loaded with radioactivity to breathe in anyway. These days that just occurred if there had been a leakage of some kind. Under such circumstances a helmet and atmosphere-recycler could be added on top of the yellow overalls worn by the engine-crew, hermetically sealing them from their surroundings. The engine-room was located just below their current location in the shuttle-bay. All these decks were part of the barrel-shaped secondary hull beneath the saucer-section. Down here the constant humming and vibrations produced by the engine were quite powerful, comparable to sitting close to one of those old-fashioned fossil-fuel burners at a ferryboat. Up in the saucer section it could barely be noticed as a soft background noise, and if you walked up to the top-section where the bridge was located, it could hardly be noticed at all.

"Wanna check whats on?" Zin asked, nodding towards the black screen they had hung up on the wall in front of them.

"Be my guest" Jonas answered.

Zin walked up to the screen, and awakened it with a gentle tap of the index finger. No longer pitch black, the screen lit up into a menu. It was the same classic LCARS interface that all starfleet computers and screens used. Jonas had forgotten the words hidden behind those letters a long time ago, but both he, Zin and everybody else working in starfleet were well trained in using it. Unfortunately the cameras listed in the first and only menu were named by serial-numbers rather than placement.

Zin cycled through a few of them, first displaying the aft dorsal view of the saucer-section, a camera that filmed backwards, between the nacelles. That was not what he was looking for, so he tested the number below, accessing the ventral front view instead. This was much closer to what they wanted, but for some reason it was bent downwards, filming the navigational deflector disc below rather than the view ahead. The third camera was not outside at all, but lying on a bench inside what appeared to be a workshop. The wall at the other end of the room was filled with shelves where equipment and gadgets were stored on top of each other, most of it seemed broken, probably stored here while awaiting repairs. The flickering image shifted between filming in gray-scale and dim colors. Then a khaki-colored uniformed blocked the view, and the camera was switched of. Since the connection was broken, the screen returned to the main menu.

Zin sighed, cause he still had a lot of numbers to shuffle through, all of them having meaningless names such as "DX-102-B" and "CB-445-X". Zin tested both of those, ending up with a blank screen at the first one, and a camera that filmed straight into the now closed flight-deck gates at the other. Then, suddenly and completely unexpected - they hit bulls-eye. The sixth camera on their list looked just like the main monitor on a starship was supposed to look like during warp. A blinking piece of text beneath the image informed them that this was indeed the camera currently hooked up to the bridge view-screen.

"Can you connect to their connection somehow, make us tag along to whatever camera they are using automatically?" Jonas asked.

"I don't think..." Zin's reply was cut short by a new development: They were dropping out of warp again. The stars at the screen slowed down parallel with the dwindling sound of the engines below their feet. Then a new number was added to their list cameras. The screen uttered at short beep to inform them about the newcomer, and in addition it started blinked in yellow outlining. - LCAR systems were designed so that even the bluntest of console operators would be made aware of new developments.

Zin tapped on the number, a action that brought him straight into the armory on board. The room was stacked with photon-torpedoes, elegant and streamlined objects who looked a bit like coffins. If the anti-matter warhead and impulse-engine was removed it had enough room inside for a grown man, a feature that was exploited by starfleet to do just that. Crew-members who died on board were sometimes put into a empty torpedo-holster and shoot into space using the magnetic railings within the torpedo-tubes. Jonas didn't really like that tradition. In the unlikely event that he got killed in the line of duty, he would much rather be taken home to his local graveyard to be buried in the traditional manner.

"Cool, the armory" Jonas said to himself.

That was another place in Enterprise that he had never seen - this was becoming a bit like the grand tour he never had. The torpedo that the camera was attached to was currently in transition between the right side wall-rack, and the open torpedo-track below. Since the Enterprise was a science-vessel it only had two torpedo-tracks that went parallel with each other, separated by a small console. The operator behind it - a fat man in a uniform he seemed to be bursting out of - controlled the two robotic arms in the ceiling. One of them held the torpedo in question in a tight grip between its metal claws, the other was removing the foremost torpedo from the track at his right side, that way liberating some space for the newcomer with the camera. It was put gently down in the track, and then the round lid that separated the armory from the torpedo-tube opened. It was pitch black in there, once the torpedo was pushed in and the lid had closed behind it there was nothing to see.

Weaponry was one of the subjects that had fascinated Jonas during his years at the academy, so despite the lack of illumination, he knew the basic layout and functions of the next chamber pretty well. The torpedo was now in the room known as the arming-chamber. At this place the torpedo was activated so that it could be given its final target destination and program-orders. When that was done, anti-matter from the main tanks of the ship was transferred into the containment-field of the warhead.

It could be armed with much or little - depending on the nature of the target and what one wanted to accomplish. Finally the air was sucked out of the chamber so that no atmosphere was lost when the outer lid opened. At this point everything was ready for launch, so the torpedo was rapidly accelerated up to several kilometers a second by the magnetic rails within the torpdeo-tube.

The procedure of arming and launching the torpedo happened at lighting speed, no more than three seconds. Since Enterprise it self was traveling at a speed very close to the light-barrier, the torpedo did not bother to activate its impulse engines when out in the open. Instead, the Enterprise went into a phase of deceleration, that way making sure it stayed clear of the Klingon ship that might be lurking ahead of them. Ships as big as this one had impulse-engines installed in both directions, so it had the luxury of not having to turn around when going from impulse to full stop.

"I would prefer it if the Klingons have left" Zin said while the impulse-engines sent shock-waves of sound and vibrations through the decks.

Even though he was talking to Jonas, his eyes remained fixed on the screen . About the same time as the engines died down again the torpedo traversed a small pocket of gas that caused the image to shake violently due to the sudden resistance. Luckily it took only a few seconds to pass through, the cloud turned out to be nothing more than a micro-nebula covering a radius of perhaps a few million kilometers. The clouds disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared, replaced by ordinary clear and still space.

Jonas thought about Zin's statement for a moment before answering:

"If they are gone, Kirk might go search for them, and we might have to tag along"

"Might be, I wonder what kind of assignment we will get now that our station is gone" Zin wondered.

Jonas preferred not to speculate about that. He had taken the job at the outpost because it had been at the frontier to the great and alluring unknown. Now that it was gone he would probably have to settle for something much closer to Earth, perhaps piloting a supply ship going between the central colonies, or something equally mundane. A lot of starfleet pilots ended up in such positions, even though it was considered second-rate jobs.

"Something is happening on the screen" Zin informed him.

Its sensors had detected something of interest, a illuminated frame surrounded by boxes of small-lettered text had appeared in the lower part of the image, all of it blinking simultaneously to attract the attention of the viewer. Then the camera zoomed in as far as it could, magnifying the area within the box until the stars turned into clusters of squared pixels. It was impossible to drag much info out of such a crappy image, to begin with it was only a few pixels in somewhat darker colors that deviated from the black and white ones. The picture changed as the torpedo got closer, the big pixels split into smaller ones, the colored dots gradually turned into shapes - shapes that became less grainy for every second. Zin understood the image and the bad news it carried long before Jonas did.

"Klingon bird of prey" He said.

At this point it still looked like a bad attempt at modern art to Jonas, it was not until several seconds later that the image got clear enough to interpret with any degree of certainty. A loose cluster of burnt rubble and debris was floating ahead of the enemy vessel. Its cannons and bridge-section were still aimed towards the remains of the outpost, the red-glowing impulse engines were facing Enterprise and the torpedo ahead of it.

"Well, at least it's a small one" Zin comforted himself by saying.

"How do you see?" Jonas wondered.

"Its the bridge. At the bigger battle cruisers, the neck ends in small saucer section similar to that of the Enterprise." Zin informed.

By the time he was done talking, the image had gone crystal clear, allowing Jonas to see for himself that it lacked such a feature. Like all Klingon warships it had a ball-like nodule standing out below the bridge-deck, but this was semi-triangular with a rounded front-section - definitely not a saucer. Jonas would have loved to study the design of the Klingon ship a bit more, but unfortunately the connection was broken. It was impossible to know whether this was caused by the torpedo blowing itself up, or that it had been shoot down by the Klingons. Jonas hoped for the first one, as it would allow them to rush in for a surprise-attack.

* * *

><p>Captain Kirk and the others at the bridge were seeing precisely the same as Jonas and Zin did down in the arrival lodge.<p>

"I believe that the torpedo self-destructed outside Klingon sensor-range" Spock said. His assessment was based on numerous factors, all blinking at his screens.

"Good work" Kirk answered in Spock's general direction.

Then he turned forward in his chair, looking towards Sulu instead

"And what is our battle-plan Sulu?"

"We are going to ram them with the deflector-shield" He answered.

"Is that so?" Kirk said, surprised by this radical and unorthodox approach.

"My proposal is that we jump out of warp as close to the Klingon's as possible, and make a drastic speed-reduction right before impact. The kinetic energy released will drastically reduce the Klingon shielding"

"In order to make as much damage as possible we should gather all of the gravitons at a single spot" Chekov shot in from the station beside him.

Since weapons and navigation would have to act in concert during a combat-situation, the bridge-designers had found it functional to put those workstations together. As the navigator on board, it was Chekov's duty to adjust the navigational deflector shield so that it correlated with the space ahead of them. If anyone, he would know how to best push a Klingon warship out of their way.

"So how is this going to work out?" Kirk asked, feeling he needed a bit more info before he could consider himself prepared.

"Well, in order to take the Klingons by surprise we need to push our engines to the very limit, so that they don't get time to raise shields once we enter their radar-range. We collide with them at one tenth impulse, at this speed our forward deflector will break us down to a full stop before it collapses, draining the Klingon shields of most of their power. I will also need to pre-program the inertial dampeners so that they keep us from flying into the wall upon impact"

Chekov was talking fast, eagerly explaining the plan in English with Russian accent. He had a somewhat boyish appearance, perhaps not so strange when having in mind that he was the youngest man on the bridge. How old was he? Twenty-five, twenty six? Kirk was only guessing. Despite his young age, Chekov was in a way a veteran among newcomers, having passed through the grades at the Enterprise before it was chosen for this high-profile mission. Since then, most of the original crew had been replaced by hot-shots like Kirk and Spock, Chekov was one of the few "natives" that starfleet had found worthy enough to keep on board.

Kirk tried to picture the plan unfolding in his head. When doing so he realized that they would have to get uncomfortably close and intimate with the Klingons in order to ram them. The forward deflector shield was only only a few kilometers ahead of them, a distance that perhaps could be stretched a bit, but if Kirk remembered correctly, five kilometers was the absolute limit.

"Wouldn't the distance get to short for photon torpedoes?" He asked.

While Kirk and Chekov had been conversing, Sulu had been busy at his console, working on - among other things - this question. By the time he had an answer ready, his screen had filled up with advanced symbols and long numbers.

"We have identified the classification and therefore also the overall weight and shield integrity of the Klingon ship. If we follow the plan we will first zap 55% of its shield, and then we will push it ahead of us. At this point we go to full stop and launch two torpedoes while rerouting energy to the phaser. The torpedoes will detonate against the enemy shields at safe distance, and then we can take out their weaponry with a few precision-shots from the phaser banks"

That clarified things a lot. Kirk was starting to like this plan, in fact he liked it a lot. Simple, bold and original. Their attack would leave those hairy and thick-headed barbarians in disarray, unable to return fire.

"Okay, look over your math one more time, and then we do this. Uhuru: you will call up Ioannis as soon as we enter the debris-field. Spock: You will trace the signal and get a lock that you transfer down to the teleporter deck so we get the scientists on board. We will also have to brief Scotty in engineering, if we want to make this a surprise we will have to be though on the engines!"

There was a lot of things to keep track on when putting an advanced maneuver like this into action. Kirk continued to bark out new orders, making the list of things that needed to be done longer and longer. His words were channeled into action all over the ship until everyone except the idle guests in the arrival lodge had their hands full. Operators were summoned to the teleporter deck in order to get the refugees from outpost 32 on board, the phaser banks were manned and checked, and the fat man in the armory prepared the upcoming torpedo-volley. Down in engineering, Scotty lit up the reserve power-plant so that it could assist the warp-core in the upcoming assault on the warp-nacelles. Up front in the barrel-shaped, secondary-hull, a team of five engineers were carrying out Chekov's orders, readjusting the deflector-disc so that the energy-barrier projected ahead of them got as small and dense as he wanted it to be.

A drawback from this reconfiguration was that the nothing kept incoming particles and debris from hitting the hull, so in order to avoid micro-fractures the main energy shield had to be activated as a compensation at vulnerable areas. This sucked energy, so gravity was reduced at all other areas than the bridge, and the lights were dimmed in order to make ends meet. Finally the back-up batteries were hooked up to the shield so that they could take a few shoots as well, just in case the Klingons against all odds would react fast enough to return fire. With the crew at energized and activated, struggling against the clock to carry out his orders, Kirk leaned back in his chair, quite happy with his commanding-abilities. It was something he had forgotten though, what was that? Oh, yeah. Off course - quite rudimentary indeed:

"Go to red alert" He said.

"Yes sir" Sulu said while hitting the button in question.

Had he remembered this earlier he would not have needed to recite so many individual orders.

At least half of them were built into the standard red-alert drill. Kirk was still quite fresh in the command-chair, he often found himself doing things in an overly complex way, or in the wrong succession. On such occasions he kept telling himself that with a bit more experience these things would become as easy as riding a bicycle. In the mean time it was comfortable to know that he had several sharp minds on board to help him out.

The ship was buzzing with activity, everyone at the bridge were working at their consoles, console-beeps mixed in with the alarm - beeps and alarms and blinking red lights on all sides. - A few hours of this was enough to make any man insane. It was a good thing then, that everyone carried out their duties with swift efficiency. Just as Kirk's head started hurting, Scotty reported that the engines were prepared - the sound of the com-line almost drowned by the alarm - ,and then Chekov screamed something about the deflector-disc.

"Ready?" Kirk shouted back, having missed most of the words.

"Ready!" Chekov yelled as high as he could.

Enterprise was set in motion according to the plan they had made for it. The massive amounts of energy consumed caused the ship to shake violently. Even if the structural integrity-field could compensate, it was unlikely that the warp-nacelles could take more than maximum half an hour before exploding. Luckily the jump would only last for twenty seconds, a clock at the forward monitor followed the countdown.

Enterprise rushed into the sensor-range of the Klingon ship at unbelievable speed, and when it jumped out of warp, they were only a few seconds away from impact. In the blink of an eye, the enemy grew out from nothingness until the red-glowing exhaust-ports of its impulse engines filled the entire main screen. During the split second it took between visual contact and collision, everyone at the bridge held their breath while clinging on to their armchairs and consoles. The computer-simulation had predicted that everything would be fine, but Kirk's guts never the less screamed to him that he was about to die. Knowledge about inertial dampeners, navigational deflector, structural integrity-field and the rest of the stuff that supposedly protected them did not help ease the instinctive fear.

When the navigational deflector of Enterprise collided with the hull-shield of the Klingons, the colliding walls of gravitons were split into smaller particles that formed a rapidly expanding shock-wave of light, heat and radiation. A flash of light filled the screen, leaving everyone at the bridge temporarily blinded. When Kirk opened his eyes again, he saw stars and planets in all the colors of the rainbow bouncing around in the bridge.

Despite the extreme physics involved, both ships survived the encounter unharmed. The speed of Enterprise was greatly reduced while the Klingons were given a powerful push away from the molten debris-field once known as "Outpost 32". The bird of prey had not reacted fast enough to avoid the collision, but now it instinctively spun around to face their adversary. Enterprise fired its volley of two torpedoes as planned, but when they had gotten half-way, a pair of disruptor-bolts was launched in the other direction.

"Embrace for impact!" Kirk screamed.

The shields buckled under the tremendous amounts of energy unleashed upon them, barely managing to dissolve the bolts before they reached the hull. In the process, Enterprise was given a powerful punch that disrupted numerous systems on board. The ship was screaming in agony, new alarms joined the constant howling of red-alert.

"Shields at 55% and holding!" Sulu screamed through the almost deafening noise.

"Take out those disruptors, do it fast!"

Since the course of action was predetermined and computer-controlled, the phasers were at it even before Kirk finished speaking. The Klingon shields had been blown away by the previous torpedo-volley, so the phasers did not have to penetrate any invisible barriers on their way in. Without shielding no hull was strong enough to withstand starship phaser-banks firing at full strength, both disruptor cannons exploded before the banks had emptied their batteries.

"Do we have a lock-on at the scientists?" Kirk screamed towards Spock.

"Soon!" Spock reassured him.

"Hurry!"

When Kirk turned his head towards the screen again, he saw that a line of three torpedoes were heading their way. If all three reached them, they would loose their shielding, and the Klingons would not hesitate to take them out.

"Evasive maneuver!" He instinctively screamed towards Chekov.

"No point sir!" He answered.

Chekov had no time to explain, but the Klingon ship was simply way too close, and Enterprise was too big a target. All three torpedoes hit, collapsing the forward shield. What felt like a massive earth-quake rippled throughout the ship, causing fires and injuries on several decks. A panel exploded inside the bridge, instantly filling the room with smoke. The explosion came from somewhere behind the captains chair, so Kirk figured that it was either the life-support console or interior monitor that had given up on them. Neither consoles were important in the heat of battle, and as long as the security-guards managed to put out the fire it was nothing he needed to concern himself with.

"Take out their torpedo-bay!" Kirk screamed while two guards in red shirts rushed into the bridge behind him, both of them carrying fire-extinguishers.

"On it!" Sulu answered.

Both forward phaser-banks had recharged by now, but Sulu needed only one of them to cut his way through the round nodule under the bridge-deck. The torpedoes had been launched through a circular hole in it's front, so it was natural to assume that the armory laid behind it. A high-pressure fountain of molten metal and red-glowing debris shot through the hole that the phaser had cut out, but Kirk had expected an even bigger explosion. Had they caused an anti-matter leakage, the Klingon ship may very well have disappeared in a flash of pure energy. This however, was not what Kirk wanted. Starfleet needed to know why the Klingons had they attacked a Human outpost in neutral space, and the Klingons had to be alive in order to explain them selves.

With both disruptor-cannons and the armory destroyed, the Klingons had only one weapon left. The small phaser bank that was bolted into its belly had so far been hidden out of view, but now the bird of prey rotated upwards so that it got a clear line of fire. Enterprise's port phaser-bank disappeared in a violent explosion that created a gaping crater that dug itself into several decks. Sulu did not need an order to take out the opposing phaser, causing a similar explosion at the other ship.

"They must not escape! Take out one of their warp-nacelles!" Kirk ordered.

Now that the enemy had been robbed of their weaponry, he wanted to cripple them and beam over the crew for questioning.

"Yes sir!"

Sulu thought for a split second about which method to use before he decided to utilize the unharmed twin-phasers at the underside of the saucer section. The other alternatives had been to launch a torpedo with the minimal amount of anti-matter required, or to wait until the remaining top-side phaser-bank had recharged. Sulu's instincts told him that both these methods would be slower than the one he had landed on, so he rolled the ship over, making the belly of the saucer-section face the enemy ship. He got a lock on at the nacelle, but as the phaser-bank charged, the Klingon ship jumped to warp. It stretched into a long green line heading out and away. At this time the power build-up within the phaser-emitter had already reached the focal-point, so the process could no longer be reversed or aborted. The yellow beam of dense nadion-radiation was released into the eternity of empty space ahead of them. Such misfires were not only a waste of energy, but also a potential hazard for living creatures if it hit a populated planet or asteroid - phaser-beams could travel several light-years before loosing their destructive edge.

"Run a check on that beam" Kirk mumbled.

Somebody had quelled the alarms, so there was no need to scream anymore. It went almost without saying, that the return to normality felt... relieving, VERY relieving. Chekov had the star-charts at his panel, so he was best suited for the task.

"It wont hit anything sir" He said after a quick check.

"Good. Congratulations people, we have just won our first battle. Excellent work" Kirk said with pride in his voice, even though it was also a bit shaky.

This had been a close call, his hearth-rate had been sky-high through the whole battle, and it would probably remain so for several more minutes.

"Any casualties?" He asked while trying to calm down.

"Two dead sir, we lost both phaser-operators when the port bank exploded" Spock informed.

"There are also coming in reports of minor injuries throughout D and E deck" He added as the info popped up at his screen.

"Dr Bones have some work to do then. Have we beamed aboard the scientists?" Kirk wondered, automatically moving down to the next point on his list.

"Yes sir, they are at the transporter deck" Spock said.

His voice was as calm and flat as ever, it was as if the battle had not affected him at all. Vulcans were known throughout the alpha quadrant for their lack of emotions, or alternatively their lack of ways to express them. This was a much debated question among Humans, but Kirk was pretty certain that there was more to Spock than pure and cold logic, even if it was difficult to detect. Spock was after all only half-Vulcan, it was his human half that had drawn him towards starfleet and human affairs. All the pure-blooded Vulcans with minds as sharp as his preferred the science-academy at their homeworld.

"Dead or alive?" Kirk inquired.

"All are alive and unharmed sir" Spock answered.

"Excellent! I'm going down to meet our new guests, you guys stay put in case the Klingons return"

Leaving the bridge felt good. The venting-system was efficient enough to remove the smoke emitted by the console that had exploded behind him, but the smell of burnt plastic and extinguisher-powder remained. Kirk was happy to see that the turbo-lift had remained fully operational throughout their brush with death. It took him downwards and landed him gently in the transporter-room without as much as a squeak.

The room that he now entered was full of new faces, all them wearing the space-suits that they had arrived in. Half of them was dressed in the new gray slim-fits, the same suits that the Enterprise was equipped with. The other half wore the older, somewhat more bulky and robust type. These oddly colored relics from the past - black and red in this example - where suits that Kirk had not seen since his academy-years. The newcomers had all removed their helmets, revealing the faces beneath. Other than the gray-haired professor-type, the two aliens where the only one to stick out from the rather ordinary looking crowd of Humans. Kirk counted one hot looking Orion girl - smooth, green skin across her sweet face - and one Denobulan man that stared upon him with blue eyes that were as sharp as his facial ridges Everyone attention had been drawn to the sound of the door as it slid open, their eyes followed Kirk in silence as he stepped out of the elevator.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Enterprise" He said with a loud and clear voice.


	12. Chapter 12: A plan

Yumaar was finally becoming fed up with space. It was too big, too empty and too monotone. Now that they had lost warp-drive, it was not much charm left in it. After a month in space Yumaar no longer understood why it had fascinated him so much earlier. Perhaps it was the isolation that had caused his opinion to change, or perhaps it was the low probability of making it home alive. Khark and his fellow bandits had blown up their communications-array, and Snowball was still far, far away. The remains of the Yumaar explorer had been left behind, they had evacuated into the landing-shuttle and the single module that they had attached to it.

Snowball held a low and fast orbit around Sintorious, and Tux had calculated that the speed lost from actually landing on Snowball rather than to just swing around Sintorious and head home was insignificant. Further more, earlier studies of Snowball indicated that there was plenty of easily accessible water there. Their recyclers were doing fine, so there was no need to refill the water-tanks, but they needed more fuel for the rocket and the power plant. Since their landing-shuttle had been equipped with the gear needed to split the water-molecules and extract the hydrogen, this became the logical decision to take. Their main thrusters had been emptied half-way in order to push them away from the wreckage of the Yumaar explorer and the memories of defeat that it embodied. Yumaar missed the holographic projector in the old ship, right now he could easily sell his grandmother to take another jog among the green and pleasant forests surrounding Knoxx-castle. Luckily they had been thoughtful enough to take their good old-fashioned board-games with them, and when they got tired of those they could always watch a movie or two at the forward monitor of the cockpit.

Yumaar and the nobles camped out at the empty floor-space between the cockpit and the exploration rover they would use to drive around the surface of Snowball. Originally this room had been designed as a combined meeting-room and office, but they had tossed out the big table and chairs in order to get enough room for their mattresses. According to the original plan nobody was supposed to stay in the landing-shuttle itself over longer periods, its function was primarily to get the rover and the scientific equipment it contained safely down to the surface. The rover was basically a hybrid between a caravan and a all-terrain truck, something that made it bigger than any other car Yumaar had seen. It was a bit too cramped though, Yumaar was happy about his decision to not move into it, but rearrange the meeting-room instead.

Currently,Yumaar found himself staring apathetically into the metal wall at the other side of the room. He had been doing so for quite some time, the monotone lifestyle he had been forced into was draining his braincells of capacity. A few more weeks of this, and he feared he would loose the ability to think clearly at all. The opposite wall was only two meters away from his feet, a little less if he allowed his back to slide down from the wall it was resting against. He was getting incredibly tired of these boring walls and floors. He missed the privacy of his captains quarter back at the Yumaar explorer. The loss of his privacy and the other luxuries that they had left behind was profound, creating a overwhelming emotional vacuum in his now painfully boring life.

The voyage had not turned out as he thought it would do, and that bastard Khark was to blame. Had there been any realistic way of doing it he would undoubtedly track him down and kill him, maybe rip of those big ugly ears of his first and watch him bleed to death. Revenge depended upon two factors: First he would have to make it home alive, and secondly Khark would have to return to K`hmary for new trades. The second criteria was outside his control, so he had decided to focus everything on the first.

The key to their survival was strict rationing. Even though the Yumaar explorer had been equipped with enough supplies for a year in space, it was not enough to get them home if they hung on to their old habits. According to the calculations Tux had made they would use two years to get home, so it logically followed that food had to be strictly rationed. - they were now down to one meal a day.

Life on board was in other words not what it used to be, but at least Yumaar had thought up a new task that could keep them busy for a while. They needed a new table that did not take up floor-space at night. It would also have to be low, adapted to a life without chairs. Hmm - in fact these two traits fit nicely in with each other, like hand in glow so to speak. Had they not been so stressed out during the evacuation from the Yumaar explorer, they might have thought about shortening the legs of the office-table, rather than pushing it out through the air-lock. Short legs would not stick out if the table was leaned up against the wall and... damn! How incredibly, ridiculously stupid they had been! It was odd that people educated in astro-phyisics, the most advanced forms of engineering, chemistry and communication could fail so miserably at refitting a small room they knew they would be trapped in for an eternity. Yumaar smiled at himself and his foolishness, for it was indeed him that had ordered the removal of the old table.

"Tux, D`Jumo. I want you to help me with something"

"Hmm?"

D`Jumo turned his head slowly towards him. Yumaar read depression and apathy in his dull eyes, his antennas were hanging way down over his eyebrows. Something had to be done about that, some sort of party or festivity. It should be something without wine though, their supply was limited and Yumaar estimated that they only had enough to get drunk maybe two or three times over the infinite sea of time that laid ahead of them. But now he was getting ahead of himself. - One task at a time, live in the moment - old K`hmynian wisdom.

"Yeah?" D`Jumo said with sleepy voice that was completely devoid of energy.

"We need a new table, we should go check what we can find"

"The old one might still be within reach" Tux said.

"Didn't we push it out through the airlock?" D`Jumo wondered, turning his head the other way.

Tux was sitting leaned up against the wall at his left side, Yumaar at his right.

"Yeah. It was too big for the garbage-cannon, but the airlock doesn't push things out the same way. All the air is sucked out of the room before the outer gates open, so there is nothing that pulls it out, and unless other orders are given it closes automatically after four minutes. I am pretty certain that the table remains in the airlock" Tux explained.

"Haha! That is funny!" Yumaar chuckled.

The fact that Tux had not bothered to inform them about their dysfunctional ways while at it made it even more funny then what it otherwise had been. In his mind Yumaar had envisioned the table flying out as soon as the gates opened, it was not before now he came to think about how that never had happened to him when he had gone through such locks to do space-walks. Why should the table follow different laws of nature than he did?

"Lets go over and have a look" Tux said.

Yumaar's legs felt quite stiff as he followed Tux's example and rose to his feet - a side-effect of sitting still for such a long time. The landing-shuttle was not equipped with an airlock of its own, so they had to walk down the hole they had carved out between the shuttle and the servant's-module. Originally this module had not been equipped with an air-lock either, only the garbage-cannon that shoot their waste out and away so that it didn't cluster around the ship.

Since there was no gravity-plating built into it the air-lock, a gravitational void existed between the inner air-lock gate built into the floor, and the ceiling above. Yumaar was under the impression that the servants found this feature quite funny, even though it had taken a bite of their already sparse floor-space.

When Yumaar, Tux and D`Jumo climbed down the ladder leading down from the lander, none of the servants were there - not in the bunks that surrounded the air-lock, not playing with the gravity-less field above it, and none of them were occupying the idle floor-space.

"Quite unusual" Yumaar commented when he stepped down from the ladder.

"Quite unusual indeed" Tux agreed.

If they were not here they were probably all in the laundry or the kitchen, or maybe in the storage-room finding out what to make for dinner. Even though food was rationed, their stock of vegetables, meat, fish and everything else was well balanced. This meant that each of their once-a-day meals could keep the same level of high quality that they were used to.

"Should we go look for them?" D`Jumo wondered.

"Nah"

The servants could take care of them selves, Yumaar thought. He was more eager to see if the table was still floating around in the tube, so he leaned over the circular elevation surrounding the inner gate and pushed the button that opened it.

"Bingo" He said smiling.

The table was right were they left it, frozen in a tilted position between the inner and outer airlock-gate. It was a nice table, its deep blue color was suiting for the eyes. D`Jumo laughed heartily at the sight, his depression had been temporarily washed away.

"Okay, lets pull it out" Yumaar said.

As he pushed himself down into the well, the absence of gravity made him feel a bit like if he had dived into a pond of friction-free liquid. It took a lot of fluttering about before he got himself into the right position. Then he gave the table a good shove upwards, Tux and D`Jumo got hold of a leg each and pulled it over the edge.

"It wont be easy getting it up the ladder" D`Jumo said while looking up towards the hole in the ceiling.

"We can use a rope or something" Yumaar answered. The opening was big enough to pull it through, so there was no problem.

"Alternatively we can turn of the gravity" Tux said.

"Why do we have gravity-plating here anyway?" Yumaar wondered. "I thought Khark teleported all of it into his ship"

"Almost, but he forgot the reserve-plating in the storage-bay, we installed it while you were doing guard-duty at the bridge"

"Aha."

Kind of odd that he hadn't asked about this earlier. While Tux and the others had been down here working, he had been sweating with the databanks, transfering the navigational logs and programming into the landing-shuttle so they could use it for advanced navigation. Right after he finished bridge-duty there had been supplies to move, and after that again he had spent a whole day outside the hull, welding air-locks and guidance-thrusters. Two days it had taken, two days of continuous, strenuous toil. When everything finally was in order he hardly had the energy needed to pack his bag and drag it over. Not in his entire life had he felt as exhausted as he had done that evening they finally broke free and accelerated away from the remains of the bigger ship. Worn down by all of this, he had not once asked himself how gravity had been maintained at the servants-quarter and landing-craft, while everything else was floating around.

* * *

><p>While Yumaar and his buddies were working on their table, decisions of great concern to them and their home-planet was debated elsewhere. Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise had summoned the people relevant for the meeting and its subject to the conference-room of his ship. Professor Ioannis and Kirk were the highest ranking, so they were sitting at opposite ends of the table. Jonas and Zin were also present, placed beside each other at the end facing the big screen built into the wall. Kirk had brought with him his first officer Spock, and a new face that Jonas had never seen before. She had been introduced as Carolyn Palamas, a young anthropology officer. She was wearing a tight starfleet uniform that underlined her feminine curves. Her yellow hair was lifted up by a band so that if formed a yellow ball over and behind her straight frontal fringe. In combination with her soft-looking white skin, this made her very blond. Quite beautiful, but Jonas also suspected that she was somewhat boring. One wouldn't know before she opened her mouth though, and right now Kirk was doing the talking.<p>

While Jonas had been studying Carolyn, Kirk had gotten up on his feet, and now he was leaning forward over the table, overlooking the new faces in his congregation.

"It seems" He started, pausing his sentence in order to make sure he had everybody's full attention.

"That we have declared war on the Klingon empire"

"But they attacked us on our side of the border!" Ioannis protested loudly and instinctively, not giving anyone the time needed to digest Kirk's grave message. Then he rose abruptly and unexpectedly from his chair. His angry eyes met those of Kirk through his thick glasses. It seemed as if he believed Kirk was accusing him of having provoked the attack upon his station. The two men looked at each other for a few seconds. The younger and confident captain at one end, the older academic and scientist at the other. Kirk was not not at all angry, and neither was he thrown out of balance by this sudden burst of aggression.

"I don't know if it will make you any happier, but we are guilty as well" Kirk answered, calm and disarming.

Ioannis eyes narrowed, a gesture that made him look very unpleasant.

"Explain" he said coldly.

Jonas was surprised by this emotional reaction from his new employer. He thought about it for a second, coming up with a explanation of sorts: Jonas had not experienced what it was like to spend several hours in hiding with nothing but a twisted and burnt duranium plate between him and the the full arsenal of a bird of prey warship. Neither had he experienced loosing his home or any important values. For him Outpost 32 had been nothing, in fact he had not even gotten a chance to sleep in the quarter assigned to him. Donatello on the other hand, had been his home and work-place for the last week, and as such he had begun to feel an affection for it. His first F-class shuttle... he hoped he could keep it for a while longer.

"Off course" Kirk said.

Untouched by the hostility radiating towards him from the opposite end of the table, Kirk walked over to the screen and pushed one of the buttons at the panel beside it. The image emerging was a star-chart representing the neutral corridor between Klingon and Federation space, as well as twenty light-years beyond - at both sides. Kirk marked of a square of it and zoomed in. As the image got bigger, color and size was added to the stars within the region in question. The chart had not yet been updated with the latest event, so Outpost 32 was still there, represented by the insignia of the starfleet science-division. If Kirk had tapped the icon he would bring up a image of its donut-shaped outer hull, but he did not. The proto-planetarian disc that it had been studying was present as well, it looked like a small red whirlwind with a yellow dot in its middle.

"Here we have the remains of Outpost 32" Kirk said while pointing at the outpost-symbol. Then he drew a invisible line between the outpost and one of its closest neighbors, the Nibulus star, with his finger.

"Our side of the neutral zone? Right?" He asked his audience.

There was no point in responding to this question, the fat line that carved through the map behind it clearly showed how the Klingon side of the border was almost a full light-year behind Nibulus. They could tell by looking at the grid of fine and thin lines that overlaid the map,creating a pattern of small boxes with equally long sides. Each one of those boxes represented the length and width of a light-year.

"Right" Ioannis mumbled.

He was leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest in a defensive manner.

"And because it is on our side of the boarder, we in the starship Enterprise, and you with your rebuilt shuttle-crafts have gone there on two different errands, am I right?"

Kirk didn't bother to get this claim confirmed by his audience before continuing. He pushed a button on the console beside the screen, causing two symbols to pop up at opposite sides of the yellow dot representing Nibulus. One of them was a simplified profile-image of the Enterprise, the other was that of a F-class shuttle.

"So we have been wandering around, taking pictures and enjoyed the landscape like we are entitled to do in the neutral zone, right?"

"Right" Ioannis mumbled, still angry, still with his arms crossed.

"Unfortunately, neither of us have done our homework properly"

Kirk pushed the button again. This time both the star and the two ships changed position, ending up just behind the Klingon side of the boarder. Some of the onlookers gasped, shocked by the dire accusation hurled towards them by the image on the screen. Breaking the peace-treaty was not something to be taken light-hearted, it had taken years of hard negotiations to get those two lines up on the map, and before that there had been heavy fighting with massive casualties on both sides.

"How come?" Spock asked politely. He seemed more intrigued then shocked by these new development.

"The stars within our region of space are with few exceptions traveling in similar orbits around the black hole in the milky-way center. Nibulus is one of those exceptions, but those who plotted its position into our star-chart, forgot to check its speed and heading"

Kirk pushed the button again. Enterprise and Donatello disappeared from the screen, Nibulus started drifting rightwards and downwards, deeper into Klingon territory. This was the fast-forward version of the map where several years were skipped for each second. The rest of the stars moved very little, clarifying the deviant nature of Nibulus.

"The logical course of action is to inform the Klingons of our error" Spock opined.

Dialog with Klingons was never easy, and ship-to-ship communication always gave away the position of the caller, even if the ship at the receiving end refused to pick up the phone. The Klingons however, had been robbed of their weapons, so they had little to fear. Enterprise had the upper hand in terms of firepower, and they also knew the current location of the Klingon vessel. They had dropped out of warp hundred and twelve million kilometers away from them, believing their stealth-generator would allow them to spy undetected. They did not, a plasma-leak gave them away. Right now they were probably licking their wounds while thinking hard on how to even the score. Regardless of this, Kirk felt no desire to kill a beaten enemy. If so he had been up at the bridge managing the pursuit, rather than down here in the conference-room.

"May I speak sir?" Jonas asked humbly while stretching his right hand into the air.

This was a habit that had evolved through years of seminars and lectures at the academy, and as such it was not easy to shake off - even though he knew perfectly well that it was not standard practice during meetings out in actual starfleet work-places. Since everyone else were silent he put his hand down and said what he had to say without further delay.

"There is evidence of an advanced pre-warp-civilization in one of the inner planets. They have launched a manned ship currently underway to the sixth planet in the system. If we leave them to the Klingons they will probably be exploited and enslaved"

"The Klingons have the right to enslave and rob within their territory, the peace-treaty is crystal-clear on this subject" Spock answered with strict, hard voice. Jonas was a bit afraid of him, so he didn't protest even though he had a lot of thoughts on the matter.

Had everyone in the room been Vulcans, such diplomatic solutions would not have been found controversial or problematic in any way. Humans however, were different - that much Spock had learned during the time he had spent with them. Kirk and the other Humans in the room would now start to plot them selves around the conditions of the treaty, finding ways to support and strengthen the inhabitants of the Nibulus-system despite the grave violation it would be against the treaty they held so dearly. Logical arguments concerning the complete absence of any tactical or material rewards would be dismissed as "cold-hearted and cynical Vulcan logic", as would the fact that they had not even spoken with the life-forms in question.

Spock sighed... a light sound that was to low to be picked up by anyone in the room, at least not the Humans. That Bolian man sitting beside that young pilot masquerading as scientist might have noticed, but definitely not the blunt Human ears that surrounding him. Humans had come a long way since that day more than two hundred years ago when first-contact was established between Vulcans and Humans. The event was initialized by a Vulcan surveillance-craft after it had detected a weak warp-drive signature heading away from the third planet in the system...

"Spock?"

…. From that day on they had patiently helped rebuild Human society from the war-torn and devastated condition it had been found in, until it was a strong, unified and well-functioning body. Since Humans were short-sighted, illogical, emotional, aggressive and a whole bunch of other negative traits, the Vulcan ambassadors had soon lost all illusions of evolving an equal and adult Vulcan-Human relationship. Instead, the Humans had been treated more like children. Every time they behaved well and followed the advice given to them by the Vulcan ambassadors, they had been given small snacks of Vulcan technology to play with on their own. This behavioristic approach had worked out nicely for both parties. The Humans had been standing on their own feet for over a century now, almost free of Vulcan support and guidance. The Humans were eager explorers who enjoyed moving about in their neighborhood. During the last seventy years or so they had been putting up colonies on all the idle planets they could find. Since these activities sent them into armed conflicts with the same bullies that had been pestering Vulcan space before them, it meant that someone else could take the heat for a change...

"Spock?"

…. As said, the Humans had come a long way since first-contact. Even though they were still basically Human - with all their flaws and drawbacks involved - the Vulcans were no longer embarrassed by having them in the neighborhood. As such, Spock was not at all embarrassed about having a Human mother either. True, he had been bullied about it in his earlier years, and he did find his fathers choice of wife rather odd - but all in all it was both acceptable and agreeable. Humans had such short life-spans, so he should perhaps try to compensate by visiting his mom more often. Both mom and dad were on Vulcan for the time being, so he should perhaps drop by after this five-year mission Kirk had dragged him into. Dad was a bit cross at him though, he had never liked his decision to study at Earth rather than the science academy at Vulcan and...

"SPOCK!"

"Huh?" Spock turned his head towards the direction of the sound with a stupid look on his face. It was Kirk who had tried to get his attention.

"Yes captain?" He said, pulling himself back to reality.

"We have made a plan, I want you to tell me what you think"

"Please repeat it, my mind was elsewhere"

"Well, yes. I am going to send our anthropologist Carolyn Palamas with Jonas here, and his co-pilot Zin. These three will seek out the ship we discovered floating about between Nibulus five and six. If communication is possible, bringing them home will help us establish diplomatic connections with their homeworld. Their job on the surface will be to represent the United Federation of Planets, and to help the natives prepare for the unavoidable Klingon attack"

The plan was just as Spock had foreseen. He didn't bother to talk about how this would cause further damage to the peace-treaty, Kirk had undoubtedly thought about that. Instead he should try to help him out so that they could harvest more benefits than drawbacks out of deliberately violation it.

"They should bring with them a military tactician and a weapons-expert at well. And how do we intend to bring them out again? The Enterprise is already lagging beyond its schedule of exploration." He argued.

Kirk smiled cleverly, but he did not answer the question. Instead he rose from his chair for the third time during the half-hour or so that they had been sitting there.

"The Enterprise is not that far of from its next destination" He said while tapping the screen-panel again. A small square formed around the star closest to their current location outside Outpost 32, or what was left of it.

"This place is only two light-years away, no more than a day at full warp. There got to be some way to multitask" He said.

"You are going to Corovius-21?" Ioannis asked, interested.

Spock's long and sharp eyebrows lowered slightly. He felt ignored, and that made him angry.

"This is irrelevant for..."

Kirk broke him off, addressing Ioannis instead.

"Quite correct. We are supposed to be there right now"

"We at the outpost have been studying that place in between our work with BY-36. It has some interesting planets, after Jonas came on board I was planning to send him out on a field trip, but it's a bit late now." Ioannis corrected his glasses while talking.

"The best thing would off course be if we could sneak in and out undetected, teaming up with the Enterprise upon returning to the neutral zone" Jonas shot in.

He was dying to get a closer look at those folks within the alien craft again, so he was all for this plan.

"What if the planet comes under a prolonged Klingon siege? You must admit that this plan of yours is both risky and unnecessary." Spock objected, sending Kirk a skeptical look.

Over the years ahead of them, Spock and Kirk would often fall into bitter quarrels over matters such as this one. As his first-officer, Spock was the only man on the ship entitled to question the decisions of the captain, a right that he would come to use frequently. But all this was the future, right now they were heading into conflict with the Klingons - one out of several to come that as well.

"Nibulus is on the list of systems to be mapped and explored, and it has a warp-civilization that we are entitled to visit. I'm not done there, and I'll be dammed if I let the Klingons take it away from me!"

Kirk rounded of this passionate outcry by hitting his fist against the table, an efficient way to underline his determination.

"But it is in Klingon space!" Spock protested, so agitated it was impossible not to take notice - even for Humans.

"It doesn't matter. We will refit the second shuttle so that it turns civilian. Our agents will use civilian clothing, and their official business on the planet will be kept a secret" Kirk said.

"How are they going to represent the Federation if is a secret?" Spock snarled back.

He was starting so sense that the plan took shape and form, becoming logical in a way - even though it was a devious and twisted form of logic.

"I don't know! But we are going to disguise them as tourists from a faraway place, and Scotty will help them reconfigure the warp and impulse signatures so that it doesn't look starfleet!"

Even though Kirk was making this up as he went along, he was getting sick and tired of Spock's dismaying attitude.

"We can do this, but not with the outpost-crew. May I remind you that they are not under your command?" Spock reminded him.

"I'm all for this plan. When I came here I wanted to explore, and besides I want to finish the project I started in the system" Jonas assured him, referring to the alien ship that he had marked with a sub-space beacon.

"Me too! I love tourism, it's why I'm here!" Zin joyfully burst out .

"If you will allow us to re-fit and merge your ships, we have a plan" Kirk said, relieved and happy to see that the outpost-people were up to it. He needed as many hands as possible on the Enterprise, specially now that it was undergoing repairs.

"Only if you make it look good, and install gravity-plating all over" Zin bargained.

"Done! I will have engineering start on it right away, you can take charge it if you want."

Kirk smiled from ear to ear while talking. He hated everything about Klingons, even that cowardly peace-treaty those damned bureaucrats in the Federation had signed with them. Here he saw a chance not only to do some good and help out a planet in trouble, but also to take on those primitive fools through a third party.

"Fine with me" Zin said.

"Am In" Jonas tallied in

"I`m at your command captain" Carolyn said with less enthusiasm than the other two. Her voice was soft and light, it fit well with her good looks.

And so it was decided.


	13. Chapter 13: Hoognoks

"Jaakh! What's happening down there?" Captain Dall`ek of the Klingon starship "Fist of Kahless" screamed through his communicator.

A lot of time had passed since he had sent his second in command down to work on the shuttle, now he demanded an update on his progress.

"It`s all good sir, I'll be ready in half an hour or so" Jaakh reported.

Dall`ek was up at the bridge as usual, overseeing the work of his crew. They had laid some days of hard work behind them, doing extensive repairs. The holes in the hull had been plugged tight, and their warp-level was elevated to 3,5 - an acceptable number. What worried Dall`ek now was that they had failed to get the hull deflector-shield back up. Without it they were very vulnerable - even to the elements of space - and further more: completely useless in combat. This was why Dall`ek had ordered Jaakh to remove those photon-torpedoes who had survived the blast, refitting them into the scout-ship in the shuttle-bay. The Enterprise phaser-bank had destroyed the torpedo-launcher beneath the bridge, but the torpedo-magazine behind it was left unharmed. In order to put them to good use, Jaakh had to make a smaller launch-system that fit into the scout-vessel, and this was no easy task. The scout was very small and compact, so it had to be a lot more modest than the huge system used on the mother-ship.

Dall`ek turned of the forward bow-camera, replacing it with their star-chart. As always, the dot representing their ship was in the middle of the screen, currently surrounded by neutral space. The red line that marked the Klingon border was far away, Nibulus was the first star that awaited them on the other side. Dall`ek was relieved to see that the Enterprise was not following them. Out here in the neutral zone it was acceptable to withdraw from battle if seriously wounded, but if he encountered them in Klingon space, the only honorable outcome would be death or victory. Such was the warrior-code, a strict set of rules that regulated the conduct of the Klingon warrior-caste.

Dall`ek got tired of the bridge, so he left his chair and headed for the exit. A lower ranking Klingon on guard-duty had detected his movement at his screen, so now he rushed out from the guard-room behind the bridge, heading for the vacant captain's seat. As they passed each other in the doorway, he greeted with the Klingon military salute. Dall`ek responded the salute without stopping. The door closed behind him, he walked on, continuing fifty meters down the dark and empty corridor. The level below the bridge and neck-section was not frequently visited, but all of its rooms could be accessed directly from the corridor as long as one knew where the ladders where hidden. The floor-plates with yellow markings on where actually hatches that could be opened, revealing stub access-tubes below it. When Dall`ek had arrived by the right one and opened it, he climbed down to the dark and narrow abyss that was the shuttle-bay. It got even darker when the hatch closed itself above him, pitch black in fact.

"Light!" He screamed.

The computer obeyed his order without any delay, several light-tubes in the walls and ceiling lit up the room and the shuttle it contained. Jaakh was not present at the moment, but Dall`ek could see for himself that a lot of progress had been made already. A thick and long barrel was sticking out of the shuttle-ceiling, it was probably connected to some kind of internal reloading-system. Like all Klingon-scouts, this shuttle was already equipped with a powerful deflector-shield and a plasma-cannon when it rolled out from the factory-floor. With torpedoes added it would prove a formidable threat even to the more advanced cultures who dared to plod around within Klingon space. Since this vessel now contained all the firepower available to them, it was only fair that Jaakh - the second in command on board - should become its pilot. Dall`ek was planning on telling him so as soon as he returned to the room. He would become the fist of the larger ship, the one everyone else depended on for their survival - a honorable task for such a young warrior.

When Jaakh walked in, he was pushing a wheelbarrow with a cask of anti-matter before him. Had it been filled with anything else it would have been room for about two-hundred liters of liquid inside, but with anti-matter it was a bit different. Since any contact with normal matter caused it to evaporate in a violent explosion, an advanced force-field was needed to keep it in place. The gear that produced this force-field took up most of the weight and mass inside the cask, leaving very little of the actual product inside it. Dall`ek guessed that it was enough room in there for perhaps ten or fifteen liters of anti-matter. If Jaakh had removed that much from their main tanks, it would make up a pretty large percentage of their supplies.

"Oh, hi there boss. I'm almost ready with the torpedoes, I just need this anti-matter for the arming-chamber." Jaakh said casually. Dall`ek was blocking his path, so Jaakh stopped and put the wheelbarrow gently down.

"How much?" Dall`ek asked.

"Ten liters. With max yield it will take four torpedoes to spend it, enough firepower to destroy most enemy ships I believe. And then there is the plasma-cannon, we have never used it before, so it still has the standard 3000 rounds that it came with"

Dall`ek nodded affirming. He agreed with the numbers and all, but never the less...

"How much do we have left in the main containment-field?" He worried.

"More than enough to reach Nibulus and a bit further. If we don't find anything there we can always plunder the anti-matter factories at Polinius-3, that's only ten light-years away"

That was a valid statement. The natives there were too primitive to defend them selves, but still capable of producing high-yield anti-matter - a good combination. "No stress" Dall`ek thought to himself, while smiling towards his subordinate.

"Hmm, good. You have done good Jaakh. Listen, I want you to take charge of this ship. Your new post will be down here, where you will stay ready for launch at a moments notice."

"At your service captain!" Jaakh said happily.

Dall`ek climbed up the ladder again, returning to the bridge.

"Sir?" The guard said while rising from the captains chair.

In Dall`ek's absence, something new had appeared on the screen. For the time being it was just a white dot at the upper-right edge of the map, the guard had not yet attempted to zoom in on it and get a visual.

"Hm-hm" Dall`ek said intrigued.

A brief glance at the info displayed in the lower right corner told him that the map was zoomed in so that it covered the range of their SUBDAR, an acronym for SUB-space Detection And Ranging. This superb system could detect other ships as far as half a light-year away at a moments notice, and as such it was way better than anything used by their adversaries. Dall`ek smiled maliciously as he followed the unknown vessel and its movement across the screen. It was quite fast compared to them, but it held a slightly different course, heading slowly from the upper right to the upper left edge of the screen. Unless something was done soon, they would break into Klingon space several light-years ahead of them. According to the computer, the speed of the enemy was Warp 8, a very high number. Would the scout be up for it? There was only one way to find out. Dall`ek picked up his communicator and called up Jaakh.

"Yeah?" Jaakh said.

"Captain speaking. I have a mission for you and your scout"

"That soon, eh?"

"We have detected intruders heading for Klingon space. You must convince them to turn back, or open fire before they cross over. I'm sending you their course and heading as soon as you light up the cockpit"

"Yes sir"

Jaakh was about to hang up, but first Dall`ek had a question for him:

"Can the scout make Warp 8?"

"Yeah, I read somewhere that these things have been pushed all the way to Warp 9" He reassured him.

"Good luck"

"Thanks boss"

Dall`ek never got that last sentence, he hung up on him right after "good luck". Dall`ek could be rash sometimes, specially when stressed - and now he had a good reason. This was the third intrusion into Klingon space they had registered during their brief stay in the Nibulus system, who knew what went on in those border-systems where the empire didn't have ships stationed at the moment? Dall`ek couldn't bare to think about it, all the most vile and corrupt aliens in the universe where probably rushing in, plundering the local planets while laughing at the honorable emperor Kahless, telling each other that he was weak and incompetent ruler who failed to protect his space. The situation was intolerable, so emperor Kahless needed many new ships fast. In the mean time they had to make do with the little they had.

* * *

><p>Jaakh opened the small hatch in the ceiling, and eeled into the narrow cockpit below. Behind the command-chair it was just enough room to lay down for a nap - in case a scouting-mission took more than one day - and behind that again there was a box of emergency supplies and a water-recycler. The reactor-pit could be reached through a tight access shaft hidden behind the supply-box, but since this was an unused scout - for some reason they had never had any use for it in the past - Jaakh didn't think he would need to go there. Only twelve hours had passed since he had removed the plastic wrapping and tossed it through the airlock. Indeed, there was still a plastic sheeting covering the touch-sensitive main-console. Jaakh had used it in order to integrate the new weapon-system in with the others, but he had been to busy to notice. The cockpit smelled of fresh plastic and brand new metal. The smell of industrial novelty was hard to describe, but it was definitely not pleasant - too dry and synthetic for the Klingon nose.<p>

The place would be stunk up eventually, getting the same natural, organic aroma as the mother-ship had. Hell, all he had to do was to leave the hatch open when he returned. This was Jaakh's last thought before starting the warm-up procedure. When cold, the warp-plasma was in fact not plasma at all, it was a solid greyish matter that it took half a minute to warm up and liquefy, and this was before the anti-matter intermixing was ready to take over the process. Both impulse and the warp-nacelles depended on it, but the guidance-thrusters that would help him clear the bay did not. The shuttle-bay systems could be accessed through the cockpit console, so Jaakh had no need for external help in starting the exit-procedure. As soon as the air had been pumped out and vacuum was established, he opened the outer gate and pushed the craft into space.

White, horizontal stripes were rushing horizontally across his screen, meaning that they were still at warp. As long as the scout stayed within the same warp-bubble as its mother-ship, Jaakh would surf on the bubble, keeping the same speed as the bigger ship. But in order to move towards the new coordinates he needed to break through the bubble, and he was not at all certain about the physics of such a maneuver, or if anyone else had attempted it. He didn't bother to access the shuttle's FAQ-menu and search up the answer, so he called up Dall`ek at the good old communicator instead.

The communicator was big - much bigger than it had to be - and boxy. It's dark brown color gave a rustic feel to it that went well with the primitivistic uniforms and the heavy, brutalistic interior design of the ship. It took some time for Dall`ek to pick up the call, so Jaakh studied it closely while waiting. Its sharp edges were exaggerated, shaped to resemble small teeth. This was a typical feature of Klingon gadgets that symbolized the...

"Captain speaking!" Dall`ek roared when he finally answered.

"Hello, it's me again. Can we drop out of warp? Or should I try to break through the bubble?"

"Moment!"

The warp-bubble faded away together with the blizzard-like white-stripes. Jaakh found normal, calm space much more suiting for the eyes, too bad that he would return to warp right away.

"Okay, move through! I'm transferring information on target as we speak" Dall`ek said.

The warp-core was still not ready, and since the exhaust-jet was powerful enough to carve through any unshielded hulls at close range, impulse could not be used this close to the mother-ship. Instead, Jaakh pushed himself further out using the same guidance-thrusters that he had used to clear the shuttle-bay. The inertial dampeners were not plugged in yet, so he got squeezed hard into his seat while at it.

"Damn, your ugly!" He thought while looking backwards through the aft camera.

The Fist of Kahless had several open wounds and black marks on it, it was a miracle that the whole crew had survived the beating. Those human ships were quite weak compared to their size, they had only won because they had taken them by surprise - ramming them with their navigational deflector. The Humans had been more aggressive than usual, and the folks on guard-duty had not been paying attention to their instruments. If so, they would have reacted in time to do an evasive maneuver. As a result of this incompetence, those responsible - Kha`lutt and Dh-hen`g - had been thrown in the brig, currently waiting to be flogged. This measure was both righteous and necessary, but it also had the negative side-effect of removing four hands during a critical period, forcing the remaining 34 crew-members to work even harder.

When he had moved into safe distance, the Fist of Kahless went to warp again, disappearing in a brief flash of light. Soon after, the info Jaakh needed to locate his target arrived as promised. A second beep from his console informed him that the warp-core was ready. The computer helped him find the best spot to intercept the enemy vessel, and then he was on his way - rushing through a blizzard og lights that came at him three times as fast as it had done the last time he had been up at the bridge of the mother-ship. It felt good to be working with a well-functioning warp-engine again, the one at "The Fist of Kahless" had been reduced to a sick old man, coughing and sneezing as it stumbled its way through space.

At his current speed, interception was not far away at all. Jaakh needed to prepare himself in a hurry, so he went through the weapons and communication menus at his console. One of many stupid rules that the Humans had insisted on when making the neutral zone was that one would have to attempt a dialog before opening fire, and this meant fumbling around with the universal translator. He set it to "automatic detection", meaning that it would find the language spoken on it's own - if it was stored in the data-bank that was. If things didn't work out, then he would go to plan B. The launch-system he had made allowed him to rapidly arm all four torpedoes with the maximum yield, and then fire them with a intervall of two seconds. The armory of the mothership had been even faster, but considering the modest and compact nature of this new weapon, it was very good indeed. His main weakness was his shields. As on all small vessels, they were too weak to block the blows of a well-armed opponent. Even with the warp-core running at full power and hooked directly into the shield-generators, he wouldn't be able to survive more than one and a half of his own torpedoes.

So was it a good day to die? He was a bit uncertain about that. His career was running smoothly, so if he could avoid getting gloriously killed in battle, he would get his very own bird of prey to command a handful of years from now. How glorious would not that be! To explore and plunder! To see strange new worlds and kill their inhabitants! Awesome! But first he had other things to do. While he had been daydreaming, his scout had dropped out of warp. It had reached the coordinates given, so now it turned around and decelerated to a full stop. Unless the other ship had made some very drastic course-adjustments, they would pop up at his SUBDAR very soon, a matter of seconds, or maybe a minute at most. Jaakh leaned forward in his chair, preparing to broadcast a message to the enemy vessel. He would first transmit on all sub-space channels, and if he didn't get a response then he would switch over to good old-fashioned radio-frequencies instead. If that didn't work out... Boom! Only one ship would leave this place alive.

The white dot appeared as expected, heading rapidly towards him. Jaakh immediately activated a camera and zoomed in on it, ensuring himself that he would not make a fool out of himself by attempting to converse a sub-space fluctuation, or some other natural phenomena. The windowless ship that was revealed through the lenses of the camera, was quite small. It was covered in white painting with some kind of bluish pattern on its front-section. The computer couldn't link its shape to any known alien civilization in its databank, but that was normal for this distance - it was still too far away for the technical and biological scanners. Jaakh pushed the button that broadcasted his voice, and started speaking:

"_This is Jaakh of the Qonossis clan, speaking on behalf of the Klingon bird of prey "The Fist of Kahless". You are about to intrude into Klingon space, turn around immediately or I will open fire_."

The message was automatically recorder, so he sat it on repeat and leaned back in his chair again - mentally prepared for a long pause of passive waiting. Communication with aliens often took its time, but not in this case. The alien vessel was alive and awake, seemingly able to handle both transceivers and translators with skilled swiftness. The voice of a female Klingon reached out to him through the speaker, perfect pronunciation and syntax. It was a long time since Jaakh had talked to anyone of the opposite sex. Even though it had not always been the tradition, the Klingon empire currently organized its fleet into purely female and male ships. It had been quite some time since shore-leave, so it was not at all odd that the voice aroused Jaakh's sexual interest. Putting his instincts aside, Jaakh knew perfectly well that it was nothing more than a good translator at work - the voice itself said so:

_We are Hoognok from the planet Hoognok. This is the ship Hoognok, and you are currently speaking with Hoognok 23,0 – 7B, Digma. Sub-group Quadari-B._

No Klingon female would have the imagination needed to form a sentence like that, so he could be certain of one thing: This was no Klingon ship. The word "Hoognok" didn't ring any bells in Jaakh's head though, and since the message had been translated before broadcasted, he lacked an original sample of their language he could analyze. Jaakh thought about this for a moment before replying:

_I demand visual contact with your vessel, please expand your uplink_

The Hoognoks accepted his demand without any delay. A visual was transmitted, Jaakh immediately brought it up on his screen. The Hoognoks turned out to be green and fury - a unusual combination of traits. Their powerful jaws took up more space on their faces than it did on most other species, and they had big, empty eyes that stared blankly towards him. They were as dark and expression-less as shark-eyes, and they looked equally hungry. All the Hoognok looked very similar, quite masculine one might say. Jaakh never the less figured that the one in the center of the image was female. Since it had the ship's console in front of it, it was highly likely that it was in charge of the group, and that it was the one he had been conversing. Why should it choose a female voice if it was not female?

Their appearance was not enough to scare a brave warrior like Jaakh - far from it - but he did need a few seconds to digest the view. Since all of them looked strong and muscular, it made him wonder what it would be like to face them in close combat. Their legs and arms ended in long black nails who looked pretty sharp, but was it enough to compensate for the lack of armor? A Klingon warrior never left his room without his basic leather west and pants, chain-mail if he suspected trouble. These Hoognoks on the other hand, wore nothing but their natural green fur. He didn't see any weapons in their room either. A native pattern quite similar to the one on their front hull covered the walls, the outlandishly bright colors of their furniture screamed towards him. Jaakh's overall impression was that this was a very civilian ship, but he could be wrong off course - not everyone were as pietistic and minimalistic as the Klingons. Among their adversaries, there were several military powers who used decoration and paint on military and civilian ships alike.

The most interesting feature of the room was perhaps the bill-board at the far back. It was a bit too far away from the camera to see clearly, so Jaakh framed in that part of the image and magnified it. All the images were of Hoognoks, always four of them - most probably the team of this ship - and they were pictured while standing in front of famous spots from around the alpha quadrant. They had been to the Eiffel-tower of Paris and the green jungles of Earth. The grand entrance to the museum of logic on Vulcan. The grand gardens of Romulus... By the ancestors! They had even walked the grand wall surrounding the imperial palace of Qo`Nos, the seat of emperor Kahless! How was that possible? Simple Tourists! In the heart of the Empire! And nobody had even bother to remove those big, ugly cameras that hung from their fat necks! Outrage!

"DROP OUT OF WARP!"

Jaakh roared his lungs out, his body vibrated with rage.

"As you wish" The female voice answered with a calmness that disgusted him, infuriating him even further.

"NOW DROP TO ZERO IMPULSE!" Jaakh demanded, still screaming. But this time the aliens were not willing to comply.

"Request denied" The Hoognok said calmly.

"If not.." Jaakh was cut short in his threat, the Hoognok had more to say:

"We do not recognize Klingon authority or jurisdiction over our vessels. Please elaborate on your claim"

Jaakh snarled towards her, he did not at all like her dry style, the professional business-like tone of her voice. How dared they to deny the mighty Klingon empire? Death was the only acceptable outcome for such freshness.

"Full stop, or I will open fire on your vessel!" He screamed, agitated.

"If you open fire, then you and your ship will be destroyed" The flat and cold voice snapped back at him. Jaakh found himself silenced by the confidence and quickness of the response. Uncertain about his next move, he opened a channel to Dall`ek back at the bridge of the mother-ship. Counting slowly to three, he pulled himself together just in time to refrain from deafening his superior with manic shouting.

"Yes?" Dall`ek said.

"The enemy claims to be of a species called "Hoognoks" and they refuse to turn around, have you heard of them before?" Jaakh wondered, his voice was hectic and restrained.

"Hoognoks? Yeah, quite rare, but I have heard of them. I tell you what: Get a technical scan, and look for machinery whose purpose and basic category eludes the computer. When you have it, call me up and give a basic description of its components and layout, okay?"

"Will do, Jaakh out"

When Jaakh re-established his connection with the Hoognok ship, they were almost within range of his scanners, floating bravely towards him as if he was no threat at all. If he got to blow these pestering things to atoms, it would be the best moment of his entire life.

"Klingon scout here" He said.

"Come in Klingon scout, please state your purpose" The female voice opened.

Jaakh no longer found it sexy. It was in fact, deeply annoying and disturbing.

"My purpose is to protect Klingon space, stand by for technical scan" He answered.

"Then we shall scan you as well. Be aware that that our former warning remains valid"

So Jaakh scanned their ship, and in return he was himself scanned. There were a few different ways to shield one self from such intrusions, but they were all very expensive - financially as well as in forms of equipment-size, weight and energy-consumption. Neither Klingon scouts not the standard birds of prey had them, so there was nothing he could do to keep the Hoognoks from getting the basic picture of his plasma-cannon and torpedo-launcher. In return, he would get to know their... warp-drive... impulse engine... hull-figuration - Hm? That was odd, the front-section was in plastic, covered with simple radiation-blocking paint. The aliens had been to cheap to build it in proper duranium, like they had done with the smaller engine-section that stuck out at the back. It looked fragile and sloppy, like something a bunch of careless civilians could have done. Scanners were next... No surprises there. With exception of the plastic hull, the info that ticked into his screen was straight forward, including the two small phaser-banks they had installed at the roof. The configuration was unknown, but they were never the less based on technical solutions that was as mainstream as it was possible to get them.

If this was their only weaponry, then Jaakh would emerge victorious from a firefight - with good margin. But he had to be careful. Just as Dall`ek had predicted, there were unknown parts, two clusters of it fact. One box containing some very strange technology was built into each nacelle-wing. Jaakh didn't grasp any of it, so he ordered a concentrated scan that focusing exclusively on the unknown components. Unfortunately, the computer remained incapable of recognizing its functions. In fact, it was not even capable of making a qualified guess. It was time to call Dall`ek again:

"Me again, I have some unknown parts for you"

"Spit it out" Dall`ek said.

"Okay..." Jaakh hesitated for a bit, not knowing where to start. Describing something one didn't understand was difficult, specially when it was as complex as the image before him. He would have to pick out the parts he thought were essential, leaving the smaller details out of it.

"I will start with the port side" He said. Then he cleared his throat, and got on with it.

"The port side box is filled with what looks like round combustion-chambers made to withhold dense energy, there is a field-polarizer that can push each... pulse... into space at a speed of half-impulse or so. The alloy used is a impressive combination of Neutronium-enforced Tetraburnium, both of them materials I believe our scientists have failed to produce. Since it is combined with an integrity-field generator of considerable power, I believe that the hard outer shell is designed to withstand the energy produced when the interior containment-field shuts down."

Jaakh's thoughts had become more ordered as he tried to explain the thing he was looking on, now he was getting close to forming a well-founded theory.

"The interior force-field holds a thick layer of some very dense, unknown anti-matter-substance in place so that it does not collide with the counterpart in normal matter that is kept outside it. Both layers are kept under very high pressure, about hundred thousand atmospheres or so. There is a small ball of neutron matter within the core of each combustion-chamber, held together by some sort of electric pulse. It's one centimeter across. As I look at it now, I believe the idea might be to elevate the interior pressure as far up as possible during matter-antimatter ignition, squeezing the neutron-ball into a microscopic amount of strange-matter that can eat through the hulls of enemy vessels."

Jaakh stopped talking in order to take a deep breath. He hated these time-consuming sessions of techno-babble, so he wanted to get done with it as fast as possible.

"In the second chamber.." He started, but luckily it turned out that Dall`ek was not in the mood either.

"Stop it!" He ordered.

"I have heard enough. The truth is even more terrifying than you could guess. These people make black holes that slams into space-ships and eats them. Everything disappear in a whirlwind of molten debris that is vomited back up when the black hole explodes in a intense flash of hawking-radiation that destroys any vessel within a radius of several thousand kilometers. No shield in the world can withstand it, it is probably the worst weapon ever created! Tell the Hoognoks that they are welcome to visit Klingon space and take their dumb photos, just warn them not to plunder or kill anyone"

"Okay.."

Jaakh put his communicator down in a slow and thoughtful manner. When it had slipped all the way into his pocket, he tapped his console, calling up the Hoognok's again.

"Greetings fellow warriors" He said as they returned to his screen.

Now that he had learned about the incredible destructive powers who they possessed, his voice became as soft and muffled as it was possible for a Klingon voice to be. He figured that these Hoognok's had lived through their fare share of battles, surviving the tests and trials of life for much longer than the Klingons had been around. It would take a long and violent history to evolve such impressive weaponry. This was an accomplishment that demanded respect - one warrior to another.

"I have a message from my superior officer that I need to share with you"

"Go ahead Klingon scout" The female voice said.

"You are cleared for entry into Klingon space. Our rules are simple, do what you want as long as you do not kill, plunder or sell technology to non-Klingon civilizations. These privileges are exclusive to the Klingon warrior caste. Violations will lead to prosecutions. Do I make my self clear?"

"Message understood. You have my guarantee, that we have no such intentions in your territory or elsewhere, Hoognok 23,0 – 7B, Digma. Sub-group Quadari-B out"

Having ended the connection, the Hoognoks returned to full warp. Jaakh followed them on his screen as they rushed past only a few thousand kilometers away. A more stupid captain than Dall`ek might have ordered Jaakh to lay down his life in an attempt at proving a point - that Klingons do not compromise their territory. Jaakh was thankful for not have been forced to go through with that. Death would have been clean and honorable, but it would also have been pointless. As it was now, these Hoognoks were free to pass through for the time being, but at least the Fist of Kahless could maintain its presence within the Nibulus system - A acceptable tradeoff as long as they kept their part of the bargain.

Jaakh felt light and happy when he turned his scout about and headed home. He could not wait to get away from the sterile reek of plastic and metal that surrounded him.


	14. Chapter 14: To the rescue

"Cheers!"

Carolyn held her glass high above the table, expecting the others to follow his example.

"Cheers!" The other crew-members tallied in.

Four arms covered in green fur approached each other, the sound of tinkling glass filled the room. Everyone were still dressed in the hairy jumpsuits the tailors at the Enterprise had made for them, but they had taken of the gloves in order to get a better grip around the glasses, and they had also removed the head-peaces in order to get the tasty looking contents in the high-stemmed glasses down their throats without spilling. It was not before Jonas had it in his mouth that he discovered the foul nature of Champagne synthesizer-style .

"Yak!" He said while swallowing fast.

It would be too rude to Splutter it over the table, so he decided to take it the opposite way - still minimizing contact between the overly bitter substance and his taste-buds.

"I concur wholeheartedly" Carolyn proclaimed. Her face contracted itself into a wrinkly grimace.

"Water!" Zin demanded.

The fat weapons-operator whose name Jonas had failed to catch, said nothing. Instead he walked over to the kitchen to fulfill Zin's wish. The self-designed ship had a big old-school kitchen that contained everything one needed to store and prepare proper food. A freezer, a refrigerator, an oven, a kitchen-board, and a blender. According to Carolyn - who was the expert on such matters - food synthesizers were shunned among Hoognoks. So why did they have one? After departure, Zin had detected that Donatello 1 had a hidden locker built into one of the walls. It had been hard to spot, and it had a reserve synthesizer inside. It was most fortunate that the Klingons had not detected it during their scan. Getting away with such sloppiness only increased the need for celebration.

"Let's throw that peace of junk out the air-lock!" The weapons-operator said as he dropped his heavy body back down on the elegant and minimalistic kitchen chair.

These chairs could have been quite beautiful, had it not been for the Hoognok's fetish for ruining their design with strong, horrible colors.

"No Jeff, it might be good for other things than champagne" Carolyn opined.

Jonas was happy that she finally had mentioned his name. "Jeff the weapons operator" - he would try not to forget that. He took a sip of the glass Jeff had poured for him, following the conversation in silence. The champagne had tasted pretty much like vinegar with gas, so it felt good to flush the bitter taste away,

"It might be something wrong with the nutrition-packs built into it, expired dates or something" Zin suggested.

"Let me get the tricorder" Jeff said.

He got up from the chair again, heading towards the storage-locker by the transporter pad, a small circular platform under a yellow light. It was so small that only one person could be transported at a time.

"I really wonder what the aliens in that ship looks like..."Zin said, a dreamy look on his face.

"Impossible to know, speculations would be a waste of time. Instead we should go through the rules of first-contact procedures" Carolyn answered seriously.

Meanwhile, Jonas had swallowed the last sip of water, and felt ready to say something:

"About that, I don't recommend switching to starfleet uniforms, there might be more Klingons inside the system, so we have to be ready for another show."

Everybody knew that the first rule of first-contact was to be properly dressed... But: Safety first.

"Good point" Carolyn agreed.

Behind her, Jeff had gotten the storage-locker open. Most of the space inside was occupied by the space-suits, but it also contained several tool-boxes at the bottom-shelf. The tricorder had to be in one of them. Jeff dug deep into the first tool-box at the far left side of the locker. When he contracted his hand again, its fingers were wrapped around a boxy looking thing. Starfleet tricorders were far from elegant, in fact they looked very much like twentieth century travel-radios, only with the speakers replaced by screens. The synthesizer he planned to use it on was still hidden away in the discrete hatch where it had been found. It was right next to the warp-core, a fire-door shielded them from its radiation. As this door closed behind Jeff, Jonas came to think of something that probably was a quite rudimentary problem regarding first-contact situations:

"How do we communicate with them? Their language is not in our translators, and ours is not in theirs"

"That depends on who they have been in contact with before us." Carolyn answered.

"If their warp-level is as primitive as Jonas say it is, then its unlikely that they have moved beyond the Nibulus-system" Zin reasoned.

"If it doesn't work, then it doesn't work. We will wave at them, speak in plain English, look friendly, and try to find out what planet to return them to using billboards and markers as our primary communication-tool" Carolyn explained between two sips of water.

Zin said something that Jonas didn't quite catch, his focus was turned towards Jeff who came stumbling out through the fire-door with the food-synthesizer between his hands. It looked very heavy, even for a big man like him. Jonas rose from his chair in order to give a helping hand, but by the time he got over there, Jeff had already put it down at the kitchen board.

"Kaputsky!" He said loudly.

"We need to get rid of it then." Zin stated.

"Lets take it out the air-lock and take a shot at it with the phasers" Carolyn suggested.

Four minutes later, the food synthesizer was evaporated in a flash of white light, reduced to a rapidly expanding balloon of gas and radiation. Everyone in the room enjoyed the event, none of them were spoiled on fire-works of this kind. The academy used almost exclusively simulators to train their ensigns and cadets. These simulators were good enough too look and feel like the real thing, but it was never the less a lot more fun when you knew that what you saw on the screen was actually happening. It gave a feeling of great power to handle such massive, and yet so very precise firepower.

And when the darkness of deep space returned at the main monitor, Carolyn pressed a button at the console, sending the ship back into warp.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, nothing was happening at the Yumaar explorer - absolutely nothing. No sounds, no activities, no movement or change. Yumaar knew perfectly well how unhealthy this extreme passivity was, and he also knew that he neglected his duties as captain by allowing it to go on. Should he feel bad about it? Perhaps so, but he was starting to understand that time was a hard enemy to fight, both when it was too much of it, and too little. Right now they had a massive surplus, and every hour they failed to fill with fun or meaningful activities drained their will to live. Chances were that this whole thing would turn into a bad cycle that pulled them down into an abyss of bottomless depression, starting with D`Jumo.<p>

On the look of it, D`Jumo seemed to be in a pretty dark spot already, and as such he was even harder to activate than everybody else. Yumaar didn't dare to think the horrible state they would be in when they got home. Oh my... That was two years into the future, two years of this! Shit! They would turn into vegetables. Yumaar banged the back of his head into the wall for the second time that day. This was probably just as bad as those maximum-security dungeons they used for political prisoners back home. How did the inmates survive it? Did they survive? Yumaar looked down at the pile of games they had brought with them, they were no longer any fun to play, he had grown sick and tired of it.

"Fuck!" He screamed.

He got no response from the dull faces surrounding him, faces that had gotten a unhealthy shade of gray mixed in with their natural blueness. He was getting sick and tired of them as well- specially that idiot Cillion who not only was a heavy snorer, but also farted in his sleep. His stench-bombs were so heavy that the air-recyclers built into the walls never quite caught up with them, it was simply not enough air in these small rooms to handle such massive pollution. Yumaar was seriously considering to move him down to the servants quarters, humiliating as it might be.

"Fuck!" He burst out again.

There was still no response from the surrounding zombies, so he repeated it a third time.

"Fuck!" He shouted even louder, causing to walls to vibrate for a split second.

"Movie?" Loup screamed back from her position in the cockpit up front.

The door was open, so it was no problem for the sound to travel between the two rooms.

"Hm?" Yumaar mumbled while considering the suggestion. There were still thousands of unseen movies in their database, the question was if anyone of them were worth seeing.

"Or games, or space-walk, or whatever his majesty might fancy. I'm at your service" Loup continued.

Her tone of voice was both pleasant and inviting. Yumaar felt drawn towards it, so got up on his feet and entered the other room. Loup had remained sexy despite the depressing situation they were in. Her big, beautiful eyes were as lively as usual, the skin had maintained its vitality. Her strong blue color could no longer be compared to the grayish and dry lifelessness of the male crew-members. Yumaar walked in and sat down beside her. Most of the panels had been shut down in order to save energy, so the cockpit was much darker than what the bridge had been back in the Yumaar explorer.

"You look good" Yumaar half-whispered while sending her a friendly look.

"Thank you, you are holding up pretty well your self" She answered.

Yumaar was not certain if he should take her on her word for that. For the time being he felt like shit, hence the swearing.

"I'm worried about D`Jumo" Yumaar said.

"Me too" Loup answered.

Yumaar turned his head towards the forward monitor. The display was the same as it had been the day before, and the day before that again. The camera was aimed in at Sintorious, a super-massive planet made entirely out of gas. When the first satellites had examined it little over a century ago, this planet had been used by some philosophers as an argument against the existence of god. If god existed - they claimed - why would he create something as useless as a ball of gas several thousand times as massive as K`hmary? No life could thrive there, and nothing of value could be extracted due to the intense gravitational pull, and the violent storms that ravaged the upper layers. The pro-god camp had responded by saying that one could not judge it as useless before more knowledge was gained, and those people had actually emerged victorious about fifty years later. It was now known beyond any doubt that Sintorious worked as a gravity-well that sucked asteroids into it, and that K`hmary would have taken a lot more hits had it not been around. As such it was a real life-saver, sparing millions of lives each years just by staying out there and holding its orbit. Later it had been discovered that Sintorious had a second function as well. Even though it was no sun, it did send out a lot of radiation, and this helped heating up the atmosphere of Snowball up to the point where it even had some liquid water in the equatorial region. A 2-0 victory for the pro-god camp?

Yumaar had no strong opinions on these matters, but as a the prince of the royal family he did have some religious functions to fulfill. This turned him into a regular temple-goer of sorts, so he could not belong to the anti-god camp even if he wanted to, and since he didn't want to... Well, religious duties was one of very few aspects of his life that felt simple and without contradictions. The temple-monks had cool robes, dramatic rituals in which he loved participating, cool artwork and cool stories. The only drawback Yumaar could think of was the price, his dad had often complained about the huge bite they took of the national budgets. - Not his problem though.

"What are you thinking about?" Loup wondered, having observed him sink into a state of silent contemplation.

"For some reason I started thinking about the temples and monasteries back home" Yumaar answered.

But he was not at all certain if Loup registered his reply, something had pulled her attention towards the radar-screen.

"Something is happening" She said.

"That's odd" Yumaar commented.

He got up from his chair and looked over her shoulder, thus getting a better angle to the dark screen. The range of the shuttle's radar was very modest compared to the powerful array they had left behind at the Yumaar explorer. Yumaar didn't remember the exact range of this smaller system, somewhere between five-hundred and a thousand kilometers. The cluster of pixels that had appeared up at the edge of their screen was in other words too close for comfort already, and it was approaching rapidly.

"Is it going to hit us, do we need to take evasive maneuver?" Yumaar asked, anxious.

The radar-screen was touch-sensitive, so all Loup needed to do in order to find out was to tap it with her index-finger and go through a very simple menu at the neighboring screen. A few seconds later, it's course was plotted out as a red-blinking line on the radar. It was red and blinking because it was heading right for them. This caused the computer to react automatically. Without asking, one of the hull cameras zoomed in on it.

"Yeah, it's going to hit us" Loup confirmed, but then the situation changed. Her thin and gentle eyebrows made a little jump

"It seems to be decelerating" She said, puzzled.

"Only artificial objects can do that" Yumaar reasoned.

While they had been talking, the camera that had been activated presented the clearest image it could get up on the main screen. For the time being it was very blurry - the radar was not the only sensor-system on board that was of a modest nature.

"They are holding relative position" Loup informed.

Since they no longer were on collision-course, the red-blinking line disappeared.

"So what happens now?" Yumaar wondered.

"Nothing. We can try to get closer if you like, or maybe.."

"We have a camera-drone, don't we?" Yumaar proposed, interrupting her.

"My thoughts exactly" Loup agreed.

Decelerating the whole ship was out of the question. Their speed was low enough as it was, and fuel was extremely limited to say the least - This was the only logical choice. The camera-drone was activated and released from its holding-chamber beneath the bridge. Loup was about to aim it in and send it on its way when the situation changed yet again.

"They are broadcasting!" She said, her mouth wide open. - She was completely baffled.

"Play it!" Yumaar screamed, thrilled by the news.

A beacon of hope had lit up inside him, making him think that this was the legendary "light in the end of the tunnel" that some people claimed popped up in dire situations.

"Yes sir, I'm sending it through the speakers" Loup confirmed.

The sound that came through was of an alien language, completely unrecognizable to Yumaar. Neither the southerners or westerners at their homeworld spoke like that, and neither did the Ferengi. In his dealings with Khark he had deliberately turned of the translator every now and then in order to hear the exact words that came out of his mouth. Khark spoke very fast, using hard and short words who where shot out like bullets from a machine-gun. These were longer and softer, dominated by vocals. The sound had a feminine touch to it.

"This is the federation vessel Hidden Explorer. We come in peace, please respond - over"

A short pause followed, before the message was repeated:

"This is the federation vessel Hidden Explorer. We come in peace, please respond - over"

Neither Yumaar or Loup understood the meaning behind the words, only that it was a short sentence that was repeated twice.

"I`ll run it through the translator" Loup said while turning it on.

She hit a few buttons on her console, then adding:

"Translator analysis underway"

Since the program had been bought from Khark and his "Sea of Opportunity", it had all the languages of his trading-partners installed, as well as some of the nuisances that could make the life of an interstellar trader dangerous. These were the aggressive and territorial species, such as for example Klingons and Romulans. Humans could perhaps be included to this list, but they were still far away from the key areas of Ferengi activity. During the brief contacts that had been between Humans and Ferengi, several Human ships had been robbed of their databanks however, and this was why the universal translator could handle standard English. It took some time to identify though. English was far down at the list, so the words trickled through hundreds of other languages before getting a positive match. Yumaar was too exited to breath, the seconds of breathless silence that passed by seemed like an eternity.

Then - finally - they were presented with a version in northern K`hmynian:

"This is the federation vessel Hidden Explorer. We come in peace, please respond – over"

A text appeared on the screen beside the radar-monitor, saying that the original sound-sample had been in a language called "English" - To Yumaar it looked like a random combination of letters not usually put beside each other - and that it was mainly used by a species called "Humans".

"Okay..." Yumaar said on inbreathe.

"Should we send a reply?" Loup wondered.

"Yeah, yeah.. I guess so. Where do I speak?"

This whole scenario had been as unexpected as anything could be, Yumaar was not at all prepared for ship-to-ship dialog.

"I think there is a head-set here somewhere..." Loup started to look aimlessly around the room, failing to spot the object in mind.

"Which one of us was supposed to fly this thing anyway?" Yumaar asked, irritated.

As the captain of the ship, he felt that he was above minor technical issues such as this one.

"Don't know. I'll go ask Sappi, maybe she knows. Wait here"

Loup leaped out of her chair, leaving the room with quick steps. Yumaar got up as well. Since it seemed like a logical place to put such things, he walked over to the small locker by the exit and opened it. Bingo! - Full pot at first attempt.

The interior of the box contained five wireless headsets. He took one from the vertical pole it hung from, found the correct button and turned it on. As he wrapped it around his skull, he was pleased to discover that it connected to the com-system automatically. From here everything went smoothly and effortlessly along a most logical path. During his weeks out in space he had often been surprised by the user-friendliness of their equipment, and this was no exception.

With the head-set active, a question started blinking on the screen beside the radar-display. "Return-message?" it asked - "Yes" he tapped. "Revert previous translation?", "Yes". "Automate previous options"... Hmm? He didn't understand that, it sounded okay though. "Yes". Broadcast? - "Yes".

Finally, he could talk, rest assured that his words would be tossed across the gap of space that separated them as good... "Unglish"? - was that it? - He had already forgotten, and the unusual combination of letters had disappeared from the screen.

"This is prince Yumaar of the Yumaar explorer 2, speaking on behalf of the Northern Kingdom of K`hmary, over" He introduced himself.

The aliens were quick to respond. Whoever was in there, he had her full attention.

"Hidden Explorer to Yumaar explorer 2, do you require assistance?" She said.

"That depends." Yumaar answered. "What can you do for us?"

"Your current heading will take you straight into an asteroid field a week from now. Survival is improbable in your current condition. If you tell me where you want to go, we can tow you there"

"Really? That would be swell."

Yumaar was thrilled, completely overwhelmed by these helpful creatures who had so suddenly popped out of nowhere. He made a little jump in his chair, before pulling himself together enough to continue the conversation.

"Our target destination is called Snowball, unless we are completely off-track, it is the closest planet to our current location" He said, talking fast and eagerly.

"Outwards or inwards?" The sweet-sounding lady inquired.

"Outwards, it's the sixth planet in our system – but we might not have the power needed to get home again"

"We can fix that as well, it's why we are out here. Buckle up and stand by for towing, I will call you up when we get closer"

* * *

><p>"Those folks are kind of heavy" Jonas said, commenting on the info displayed at the screen.<p>

He was looking over Carolyn's shoulder, watching her work. Before towing could be commenced they needed a lock-on with the tractor-beam, and with a ship as densely constructed as this one, he was worried that it might drain their anti-matter supply. This was a worry that Carolyn didn't seem to share:

"Let's just get them to the planet. We might not have to drag all of it down the other direction" She replied.

"Let me run some calculations" Zin shot in. He was standing by the kitchen sink, washing something. Jonas found it odd that he prioritized cleaning above screen-spotting in a situation like this. It was okay though, Carolyn might get distracted if everyone followed Jonas example and gathered around the pilot's chair to hang over her, following her every move.

When Zin had finished the dishes, he headed for the engine-room where the second set of consoles were located.

"Do these people have inertial dampeners by the way?" Jonas asked when he was gone.

Without it they would have to be a lot more careful than they would be when accelerating their own ship only.

"Nope, we have to be slow and gentle on them" Carolyn answered.

The craft shook a bit as the tractor-beam linked the two vessels together. Carolyn set the impulse engines to " turtle setting" meaning that it would keep an acceleration of 0,5G. In this snail-pace it would take the ship one and a half year to reach normal traveling-pace of full impulse, a speed reached in a matter of minutes at the normal setting. As such it was lucky that their destination was so close. Four hours of acceleration would get them up to the right speed, then they would have five hours of cruise, followed by another four with deceleration. Space-travel without dampeners felt a bit like using a rowing-boat to cross the Atlantic ocean. To make things even worse, they risked running into the Klingons again. What if they thought they were stealing the ship, breaking the oath they had made not to plunder? The Klingon ship would see it as its duty to die for the empire, it was not at all certain that they could scare them away with fake weaponry illusions made from duranium shadows.

"We will have to speed this thing up a bit" Jonas said.

"Oh, and how do you suggest we do that?" Carolyn wondered.

Her eyes remained fixed on the screen. One of the instruments had reported a minor fluctuation in the wave-pattern of the tractor-beam, so now she was running a system check while simultaneously looking for more fluctuations.

"We can pull them into our warp-field and warp our way in without further acceleration" Jonas suggested.

"Won't work. Our field is extremely tight. F-class coils you know, small and inflexible"

Jonas made a grumpy sound while getting up from his chair.

He wanted to go and glare out of a window, scrutinize the stars with a solemn expression on his face while putting his hands on his back, like those evil villains always did in the comic-books. Unfortunately there were no windows installed, so instead he walked over to the sofa and laid down on it. It was quite nice and soft, even though he resented its aggressive redness.

* * *

><p>When they finally fell into orbit around the planet, Jonas had fallen into deep sleep on the sofa – Carolyn had guarded the consoles in his absence, until Jeff had relieved her. It was he who had shaken the rest of the crew back to life, summoning them over to the main monitor in order to show them the panorama from orbit.<p>

"It looks mighty cold down there" He said, commenting on the landscape below them.

Jonas had taken seat by the table next to the kitchen, casting a slanted look towards the huge image on the front wall. He signaled his agreement to Jeff's statement with a small nod, thinking that the locals had found a good name for it when calling it "Snowball".

"I have already put it into geostationary orbit above the sunny side of the equator, as the aliens requested." Jeff continued. His eyes remained fixed on the screen.

Meanwhile, Carolyn emerged from the toilet - the third room in the ship. At the look of it, she had refreshed her make-up. Her lips had gotten a more rich and vibrant layer of red color, and a new layer of the dark stuff that accentuated her blue irises had been added to the skin around her eyes.

"If everything is ready, I say we go for a little walk at the surface. We can check out the place together with the aliens" She suggested.

"Sounds fun, but somebody has to stay with the ship" Jonas reminded her.

"No problem, I kind of like the view from here" Jeff said while starting additional scans. It would be sloppy to beam down with only the limited knowledge that a simple visual provided. before beaming down.

"Did you people know that there are bacteria-growth in the ice The bio-scanner have detected twelve different kinds" He informed in a tone of fascination.

" I detected several in the gas giant as well, when I flew by earlier" Jonas answered, recalling his last visit to the system.

How long was that ago? More than one week, less than two. - Strange how so much could happen during such a short time-span.

"The sensors classifies this as a K-class planet, so we are going to need our space-suits." Jeff concluded.

Since Jeff was sitting with the headset, the others could not hear the dialog taking place after he called up the aliens, only that he muttered short words like "hm-hm" and "yeah" in between the long mumblings arriving from the other end.

"I have been told to put us down in the exact center of the biggest crater in the equatorial region. They say it's pretty calm and hot down there, so it's a good place to start" He informed after having hung up on them.

The aliens had chosen a very interesting starting-spot for their tour. Judging from the orbital view, this was an oasis compared to the rest of the planet. The atmosphere thickened with the depth of the crater, creating a green-house effect that made it increasingly warm as one approached the bottom. The thick blanket of white broke into patches about a kilometer down the crater wall. The patches thinned out, eventually disappearing. Ten kilometers down, the landscape was a barren mix of gravel, rocks and boulders. Around the bottom – where the crater wall started to flatten out - the stony ground was all tints of gray, mixed in with fine lines of deep-blue that twisted and turned their way down the uneven path. The Sinuous streams weaved into each other as they flowed downwards, forming big rivers down by the beach-like coast that surrounded the central lake. A droplet-shaped peninsula grew out from the beach, ending in a flat and gray looking island at the center of the lake. It was half-hidden beneath a thin shade of white. This was probably the only place on the planet where water got hot enough to vaporize and form clouds.

The place had a certain appeal to it, but Jonas was uncertain about actually using it as a base of operations. What if the peninsula was about to be flooded? What if there where dangerous life-forms lurking in the lake? What if the blue stuff was something else than water? Something toxic and erosive?

"We need to scan that crater" He told Jeff while leaning over his chair.

"On it!" He answered, his voice filled with energy.

Trained fingers moved rapidly across the panel, starting numerous types of scans that made a simultaneous sweep across the area.

"The blue stuff is water alright" He informed as the result of the simpler scans ticked in.

"... And I have found some advanced plant-life, we should go check it out" He added.

"The aliens are going to love this!" Jonas burst out joyfully, a broad smile on his lips.

* * *

><p>The central island was a hundred kilometers across, so Jonas could not see the lake surrounding it from the position he had beamed down to. He was the last one down, Carolyn and Zin had beamed down before him. The silvery color of their suits could have worked well as a camouflage against the backdrop of gray rocks, had it not been for the dark yellow, almost red atmosphere above them.<p>

Carolyn started walking, Zin and Jonas fell into line behind her. Their feet made crunchy sounds as they stepped on the gravel. It turned out that the small stones - despite their solid appearance - were too soft to take the extra weight. They smoldered into dust beneath them, forming a very visible scar in the landscape they had traversed.

"Look!" Carolyn suddenly screamed through the com-link, breaking the self-imposed radio silence they had been in since beam-down.

She was pointing upwards, same general direction as the visor of her helmet. She wanted to turn their attention towards the massive gas giant that filled half the sky above their heads. The atmosphere had dimmed it down a lot, turning it into a mighty, red shadow. Jonas found it a bit threatening, he was afraid that it might fall down on them.

"Beautiful" He said, regardless.

"I like this place" Carolyn stated happily.

They walked on. Silence again. Only the rhythm of the air-recycler and the crunchy sound of boots against ground for company. The next kilometer of porous gravel was passed with rapid pace. The gravity was lower than Earth-standard, giving them a sensation of extra energy. They had been quite lucky with the weather it seemed, there was nothing but a single white cloud in the increasingly red sky, and no wind.

Their destination was a very unusual plant that Jeff had picked up on the bio-scanners just before beam-down. It looked like what the suspension spring of a old-fashioned automobile had looked like if it had been planted into the ground, stretched out a bit, and then been covered in thick brown fur. It was one meter tall, and it had no leaves or flowers.

"Who has the tricorder?" Jonas wondered.

"I do" Carolyn answered.

Before she left, she had been smart enough to attach a utility-belt around her waist, something neither Zin nor Jonas had remembered. Their only equipment was the basic life-support and communication-gear installed into their suits. Teleportation had made ship-to-ground transport very easy, and this was why away-teams traveled so lightly packed. If they lacked anything, all they had to do was to call up Jeff and have him beam it down to them. - It could be done at a moments notice.

"Hmm" Carolyn uttered.

Something interesting was undoubtedly going on at the screen of her tricorder. She made a few more sweeps of the plant before she felt satisfied with the info gathered.

"This plant has a body-temperature" She said.

"Is this summer or winter?" Jonas wondered.

The absence of leaves and flowers gave it a winter-like appearance, but the body-temperature suggested otherwise. Why would a plant need thick fur and inner heating if five Celsius was as cold as got?

"We can make Jeff find out, but I guess it is summer. This thing is loaded with spores that are about to be released, we are probably at the end of the season. My guess is that the heat is a by-product of intensive growth and spore-production"

Carolyn looked at the screen of her tricorder while talking.

"For an anthropologist I say you are pretty good with plants" Zin complimented her.

"Thanks" Carolyn smiled in his direction, the blue face smiled back.

Jonas liked to watch Carolyn smile. It was very warm and genuine, making her more beautiful than she was when in her normal mood of neutral professionalism. While admiring her, the characteristic whistle of the communicator built up inside his helmet. The name of the caller popped up in digital text against the visor. "Jeff Landster - orbital position" it said. Jonas was a bit surprised that he had called him rather than Carolyn, who was the senior-ranking officer and therefore in charge of the operation. It was a protocol-violation, but it didn't matter at the moment. Jonas right arm-wrist had a panel built into it, he opened the protective lid and pushed the button that let him through.

"Yeah?"

"Jeff here" Jeff said.

There was a lot of static on the line, quite odd considering the a calm and thin atmosphere.

"Jonas speaking, I read you" Jonas answered.

"Good. I call to inform you that our alien friends have detached their lander and are on their way down, I also need to inform that there is something wrong with Carolyn's transceiver, I can't get through to her"

Jonas theorized that radiation emitted from the gas-giant might be disturbing their equipment in unpredictable ways, but he didn't bother to start a debate on it.

"Okay, We will go have a chat with our new friends then. Anything else?" He asked.

"You will be moving into the dark zone of the gas giant in an hour or so, it will get pitch black, but you have night-vision built into the suits"

"Scraaaaatch - Peeeeooow"

Jonas never got the chance to round of the conversation according to the normal rules of courtesy - the sudden flood of static did it for him. This was typical of gas-giants of this size, radiation was lashed out from their stormy interior as dense bolts rather than evenly distributed background noise. Since it held such a low orbit, Snowball soaked up a lot of the bad stuff.

"Did everybody hear that?" Jonas asked.

"We sure did," Carolyn said.

She took up her tricorder out of the holster again and tapped a few buttons, adjusting it to measure radiation-levels.

"A lot and increasing" She said while waving it above her head.

Zin had a interesting point to make:

"We will not be able to converse the aliens without radio, and I also believe first-contact situations should happen in daylight rather than shades of fluorescent green"

"Besides, the incoming radiation-wave is on the very limits of what our suits can block"

Carolyn added to his argument. She put her tricorder it back into her utility-belt while talking.

"Okay, lets beam up before it gets too heavy, we warn the aliens about the radiation wave and put everything on hold" Jonas proposed. It sounded like a good plan to the other two, they nodded in agreement.


	15. Chapter 15: Easy prey

The course and heading of the Klingons had been recorder during their previous encounter with the Hidden explorer, and this information allowed the Hidden Explorer to calculate the time and place of their entry into the Nibulus system. Now, a very faint and untraceable tracking-beam had locked on to the enemy vessel, feeding the exact position of the Klingons back to Jeff, who monitored the situation from the bridge. Despite staying in orbit, the fake weaponry, funny costumes and dashing interior of the Hidden Explorer would keep Jeff safe. It was unfortunate though, that Yumaar's servants still risked being blown to peaces. A shortage of idle spacesuits made it impossible to bring them down to safety, and the Hidden Explorer could not intervene if they were kidnapped. In addition to weapons, jewelery and other values, the Klingons were always looking for people who they could enslave and send off to their mining-complexes at Rura Penthe, alias the "aliens graveyard".

An hour earlier, the Hidden explorer had taken a little dip into the atmosphere, using its phasers to melt a horizontal corridor through the thick glazier the rest of the crew were hiding below. Scanners didn't penetrate all the way down, and the opening itself was impossible to detect from space. They were - in other words - safe. The cave at the deep end of the artificial corridor was lit up by several artificial lampposts who had been scattered around the hard, frosty ground. Yumaar's landing-shuttle was standing in the middle, where the lofty arch of dense ice that enclosed them where on its highest. Jonas was currently tightening the last bolt of the lamppost he was assembling. Even though it was the K`hmynians who had brought them along, it might just as well have been federation technology. There was nothing alien about the simple design, a metal rod connected to a three-legged platform. The bulb on top of it was big and round as a football, and when turned on another dark plot of frozen ground was illuminated with thick, green light - job well done.

Jonas strolled happily over to Carolyn, who had seated herself on a rock at the edge of the cave, right in front of the glacier-wall. He sat down beside her without speaking, overlooking the pattern of lampposts they had erected. Yumaar and his fellows were still not completely done at the other side, they had three more to go before the cave was fully illuminated.

"I wonder if these fellows breathe oxygen" Jonas said thoughtfully while watching them work.

He had been thinking about inviting them up to the Hidden Explorer, but this would only make them take of their helmets if they consumed the same type of air as they did. So far in their relationship, Jonas had learned that the aliens called themselves K`hmynians, and that they came from the fourth planet in the system, a planet they called K`hmary. Equally superficial descriptions of Earth and the united federation of planets had gone the other way, and this had been all nice and friendly. Jonas however, found it somewhat difficult to bond with beings whose faces were hidden behind thick, reflective visors.

"They do, I did a full medical scan with the tricorder" Carolyn answered.

"Good work, do you think we can bring them into our own ship?" Jonas wondered.

"Well, there is always the risk of exchanging virus and bacteria, but other then that it should be no problem. Their suits hold the same pressure as ours" She replied.

She looked at him briefly before turning her head back towards the Yumaar's lander and the six-wheeled truck that was parked in front of it. She had been sitting there for a while, exploring the design and details of the alien vehicles. Even though they lacked guns and camouflage painting, the sturdy design gave associations to twenty-first century military machines. The naked, steel-gray metal broke with the illusion however, it could probably be seen from miles away when out in the open.

"Odd how the universe create such striking similarities, don't you think?" Jonas said while nodding towards the not-so exotic looking crafts.

This, in turn, caused a interesting thought inside Carolyn's mind to surface:

"Thinking philosophically, isn't it even weirder how the majority of all intelligent lifeforms known to the federation has evolved to breathe in approximately the same atmosphere we Humans have?"

"Had it been any other way, alien-human interaction had been much more difficult" Jonas pointed out.

"We Bolians have discovered 32 different energy-based beings, 23 of them floating in free space" Zin said, entering the conversation while climbing up on the rock beside Carolyn.

Like most Bolians, Zin was a bit chubby, and heavy on his feet. The other two could hear him wheeze into the microphone of his helmet while pulling himself up on the stone.

"Energy-based beings, what does that mean really?" Jonas wondered.

As he recalled, the federation had discovered some of those as well. Scientists claimed that they were among the most fascinating phenomena in the universe, but Jonas had no clue how they were defined, or what they were made of - hence the question.

"They are beings without a fixed body-shape. Most of them are made up from streams of carbon-rich plasma and gas. - Patterns of electrons and photonic or sporocystian energy structured into advanced ways of thinking and communicating by organically produced force-fields that also keeps them from flying apart. I don't really know a lot about it, only that some of them are really dangerous"

Zin sounded really bright while talking, too bad that his eager gesticulation ruined the impression. Jonas felt that this stuff had the potential to make his head hurt, the only thing that could prevent it was a swift change of theme.

"I have been thinking about inviting the K`hmynians over to our ship later" " He said to Zin, repeating the same idea he had aired to Carolyn moments earlier, while also rowing away from the mind-blowing subject of energy-based lifeforms.

"Hm, yeah. I guess we could do that" Zin answered, but he didn't sound very enthusiastic.

The final word on such matters were up to Carolyn off course. She was in charge of the expedition, but her style of leadership seemed so democratic and easy-going that it hardly felt like leadership at all. Up to now, Jonas had felt more like a member of a consensus-driven collective than an Starfleet employee on a strategic assignment.

Carolyn said nothing, so Zin shared another peace of information, less complex this time:

"I talked to them just now, and they said they want to go for a walk on the glazier once the Klingons move on"

"Maybe later then" Jonas replied, concluding the conversation.

After that nobody said anything for a while. Instead they watched the K`hmynian landing-party set up the last couple of lampposts. There were twenty of them altogether, but the last two were not yet up and running, leaving a small corner of the cave in darkness. Everything else was filled with fluorescent green light, it was as if they were watching the world through night-vision goggles. Quite frankly, Jonas found their choice of color annoying. He was looking forward to get out into the open again. If only those darn Klingons could leave...

"Must be Jeff!" Carolyn suddenly burst out, leaving the other two puzzled.

Jonas sent her an odd look, then the familiar sound of the communicator-whistle flowed through his helmet as well. Under all other conditions, the brightly green info-text would stand out from the environment on the other side of the visor. It was only in this strange, unpleasant light that text and surroundings blended with each other, making the letters blurry and hard to read. Hard, but not impossible. Jonas eyes and mind struggled for a few seconds before they managed to make sense of the diffuse shapes, turning them into normal letters. It was Jeff alright, Carolyn had assumed correctly. He pushed the green button on his wrist-panel, letting the caller through. Since he had been slower then the other two, the meeting had started without him. Jeff had said something important that Jonas had missed out on, and now Carolyn was throwing a question back at him.

"How do we know that?" She asked.

"I detected plasma-fire in close proximity to the planet surface. The Klingons would not have invaded unless they planned to stay for a while" Jeff answered.

"I have to agree with Jeff, The Klingon ship was badly damaged in their skirmish against the Enterprise. Since the colony they have attacked is capable of producing plasma-weaponry, they might also have the materials and workshops the Klingons need to repair their ship" Zin pointed out.

If the conversation was about what Jonas thought it had been about, then he agreed with Zin. He couldn't know for certain though, not yet anyway.

So for the time being, he kept his mouth shut and listened.

"I want to take a walk outside, and besides: We should not keep the K`hmynians away from their research unless we really have to" Zin continued, adding another factor to his basket of arguments.

"Okay, okay. Just being careful. We will inform the K`hmynians. You stay up there a bit more, okay?" Carolyn said to Jeff.

"As you wish, but if we are planning to stay here for long, I want to take a stroll on the surface as well." Jeff replied.

"We will see about that, Carolyn out"

The connection was cut, returning them to their local bubble of radio transceivers.

"Alright, let's get out and draw some fresh air!" Jonas burst out.

He had thought this cave thing was a bad idea from the start, and now he was just as eager to leave it as Zin was, perhaps even more.

"I think our alien fellows are rounding off as well" Carolyn stated while pointing towards the four small figures with the big egg-shaped helmets.

The last lamp was up, but the terrain it was standing on was a bit rough. The lamp seemed slightly tilted, the legs were not properly adjusted, and the result looked unsteady. This suspicion was confirmed when one of the K`hmynians gave it a gentle push, causing it to stagger from side to side.

"Let's get down there and lend a hand" Jonas said, a bit annoyed by the idle passivity he and his companions had fallen into.

Without waiting for the others, he jumped decisively down from the stone and started walking towards the other party with long strides. The K`hmynians were at first too busy working to notice his approach, and when they did he was immediately included to their work-group. Without really understanding how it had happened, Jonas suddenly found himself holding a bolt in one hand while keeping the lamppost steady with the other. Their translators had not yet kicked in, so his helmet was filled with K`hmynian chatter.

"Kyo, no-gas?" One of the females asked him in a curious tone of voice.

Her voice was sweet as honey, quite sexy - even though her child-like size made it somewhat disturbing to think so. She looked up at him, and he looked down at her. Their eyes did not meet. Instead, he saw his own image reflected in her golden visor. The transparent square of glass that framed his face in looked cheap, as if he was wearing the protective gear of a bee-keeper rather than a spacesuit. He found the K`hmynian spacesuits much more elegant.

"Bross-nas!" Another female snapped back at the first one.

The aggressive newcomer pulled the bolt out of Jonas hand, and jammed it into the correct slot. Meanwhile, the two male K`hmynians had been working on the metal-feet, readjusting them into a more stable position. When the last screw had been tightened, Jonas was told to let go of the lamppost in classic British-English.

"Thank you" The alien added.

Jonas was pretty certain that the voice belonged to Yumaar, even though the male voice-tracks installed into the translator were very similar, hard to distinguish from each other. While standing there - surrounded by dwarf-like aliens with golden eggs for heads - Jonas came to think about a question he had wanted to ask for a long time, it was just that all sorts of problems and activities had gotten in the way:

"Where did you get that translator-program by the way, have you been in contact with federation species before?"

As the two male aliens rose to their feet, he noticed how snow and sand had frozen stuck to the kneepads of their dark, body-tight spacesuits - a little reminded of how cold it really was outside their individual bubbles of artificially heated air.

"We bought it from a interstellar trader, I don't know if he was a member of your organization" Yumaar answered.

"Trader you say? What species?" Jonas wondered, a spark of interest glided across his face.

"Ferengi, bad people. Came back and stole the warp-drive they sold us"Yumaar replied angrily.

"I have never heard of them. Good we were in the neighborhood, eh?"

Jonas wanted to give him a friendly clap on the shoulder, he certainly would have done so had he been a Human. Newly acquainted aliens on the other hand... they might interpret it as an act of hostility.

With the lamps up and the Klingon threat busy elsewhere, there was nothing holding them back in the cave. Yumaar and the others in his team responded positively when Jonas suggested a walk outside, so they strolled towards the exit together. The corridor they walked through had been completely dark, had it not been for fluorescent light-tubes that had been bolted into the ice at frequent intervals. Noticing how how much energy and resources the aliens had spent lighting the place up, Jonas begun to wonder if they were planning to use this cave as a permanent base. Yumaar had expressed several times how he liked the crater better, so what could have made him change his mind? Had he changed his mind? The only way to find out was to ask him.

"When I read through last nights weather-report this morning, it was kind of scary" Yumaar said.

"We noticed it as well" Jonas replied while thinking back on how the powerful radiation-burst lashed out from the gas-giant had drowned his chat with Jeff in background noise the day before.

"The gas giant above us is showering the place with radioactivity, the outer sensor-grid of our lander soaked up 45 grays between the first touch-down, and entering the cave" Yumaar claimed.

45 grays was a lot, Jonas found himself wondering how long such a massive amount of radiation would take to kill a unshielded man. Half an hour? Fifteen minutes? He could not be certain that the numbers were accurate however. Not because Yumaar had any reason to lie or because he suspected his instruments to be inaccurate, but rather because translators had a tendency to mess up when it came to numbers and different systems of measurement.

"Sounds bad, our suits have a absolute limit around that number" Jonas answered while simultaneously realizing what a useless conversation they were having.

He didn't know what type of radiation they were speaking of, and he was in no mood to go into details.

"It should be okay down in the cave though. We did another measurement, and it turned out okay"

Yumaar said.

"That's excellent news!" Jonas agreed.

They walked on in silence, gradually approaching the so called "chameleon-softscreen" that concealed the cave-opening. In addition to blocking scrutinizing rays sent out by enemy scanners, the softscreen had a thousand different patterns installed, a feature that made it the ideal tool for those who wanted to hide from curious telescope-lenses as well. It was stretched out and strapped to bolts hammered into the walls of the cave, as if it was a animal skin of a drumhead. Captain Kirk had been smart when he had supplied them with this peace of equipment before departing the Enterprise. Should he and the other starfleet captains decide to establish a more permanent federation presence within the system, they now had good hiding-place set up for them.

Jonas and Yumaar had walked faster than the others. By the time they reached the softscreen, the rest had fallen long behind. Jonas pulled down the inner zipper of the soft-screen and then he invited Yumaar to go through first, signaling his intention with a friendly gesture. Yumaar nodded, and as Jonas lifted the now loose peace of fabric, a thick beam of sunlight entered through the narrow opening he had created. The artificial greenness of the cave was chased away, and Yumaar's reflective visor lit up, turning from yellow to bright white. Yumaar raised his arm and held it in a protective position in front of his visor, not lowering it before his vision had adapted to the new conditions. The event took only a few seconds, but Jonas learned several new things from this observation: For one, K`hmynians used light to observe their surroundings. Secondly: that their eyes were positioned in their heads. And third: that these eyes adapted to changing light-conditions much the same way as human eyes did. When meeting unknown species of intelligent life one could not take such things for granted, even when they had a humanoid shape.

Jonas followed closely behind Yumaar, emerging behind him at the other side of the softscreen. He now found himself standing at the foot of the big glazier. It rose upwards behind them, forming a massive wall of white that lay as a thick and heavy cover between two sharp mountaintops. The twin peaks were completely barren, naked gray rock from top to bottom. It was no way to know for sure without getting close and personal with the tricorders, but to Jonas they seemed devoid of even simple life such as lichen and moss. This high above the crater-floor, the atmosphere was almost as thin as it was on the high plains beyond the peaks. The climate was harsher here then it was at the bottom, Jonas suit-sensor read minus 70 Celsius. As he turned around - facing the glazier rather than the valley below - he was pleased to see that the chameleon softscreen blended in nicely with the surrounding ice, even at this ridiculously short distance. A slight 3D-effect was built into it, giving it the illusion of rough texture even though it was in fact completely flat.

"Do you have snow and ice where you come from?" Jonas asked while tilting his head backwards so that he could gaze all the way up to the edge of the wall, forty meters above the softscreen-illusion.

In a milder climate it would be dangerous to stand this close to a wall of ice, but in temperatures as low as this, the ice was hard as stone.

"We do. Lots of snow in the northern parts of fathers kingdom, and in the far south as well"

"How come? your sun is so big" Jonas wondered.

"The thick clouds block most of it, is your planet different?"

"But doesn't that start a greenhouse effect that raises the temperature?" Jonas protested.

"A what?" Yumaar tilted his head sideways, the same way he had done when Carolyn had told him about the Klingon raiders. - "This galaxy sure is crowded" he had answered.

Thinking back on it, the remark had been quite funny.

"Never mind"

All atmospheres were different, so whatever the explanation might be, K`hmary was probably not unique in its ability to avoid the Venus-effect. There was no point in bugging Yumaar with it, not when the panoramic view ahead of them was so great. The steep hillsides that ran down from the ridges of the valley met each other in a chaotic landscape of huge boulders, a massive, impassable rocketry that was partly shrouded by a thin, white fog that ran down the valley like a ghostly river. It was probably carbon dioxide and monoxide from the highlands, clustering together on its way down to the atmospheric pond at the bottom. When arriving by the glazier there had been strong winds, but now it was completely calm. A heavy, somewhat disturbing silence laid upon the vast landscape. Jonas tried to ignore the sound of his own breathing, a sound that was enhanced by the helmet wrapped around his head.

"Lets walk up on the ridge over there, and see how it looks at the other side." Yumaar said after a while of gazing, probably enjoying the untouched wildness of the landscape just as much as Jonas did.

The hillside Yumaar pointed towards was less steep than the others, and there were no big boulders blocking the path. Depending on the landscape at the other side of the ridge, this could be the starting-point of a way down for their truck.

"Agreed, lets check it out" Jonas answered.

* * *

><p>While the joint exploration-team from the united federation of planets and the Northern Kingdom of K`hmary continued their exploration of Snowball, the Klingons within the system had their hands full with less peaceful activities. Captain Dall`ek had found a promising warehouse to plunder on Nibulus 5, and his away-team had just beamed inside it. While circling the airspace above in his refitted scout, Jaakh was constantly looking out for approaching hostiles. The town below him was little more than a cluster of small plastic houses, each one a identical copy of its neighbor. Colonies such as this one were usually set up by machines, a first wave of robots and building-materials that prepared everything for the settlers that arrived with the next wave of spaceships. That at least, was the way Klingons had done it when they took their first steps into space, many centuries ago.<p>

The big question now was if the locals had any ground-based troops to send against them. The villagers had fled when they saw Jaakh's scout drop down from the sky, and the away-team did not report any resistance from within the warehouse. Unless some sort of counter-strike was launched against their position soon, the raid would end without a shot fired. The away team was currently busy marking all valuable goods with beacons who helped the teleporter up at the main ship aim in on them. The work was progressing rapidly, and there were no sign of the enemy. Too many defeats and unsatisfying battles had left the Klingons thirsty for blood, so this was a big disappointment. But what could one expect? The civilization that had established this colony had a tech level so low that they barely were capable of making the journey, much less carry along the resources needed to set up a local defense-system on the surface. If they wanted more action, they would have to go deeper into the system and pick a fight with their homeworld instead. Perhaps they had more of those orbital plasma-cannons he had blasted on his way down?

The thrusters of his scout hummed steadily as Jaakh started another revolution around the warehouse. It was running on autopilot, allowing him to grant his full attention to the flat landscape and the village below. He saw no movement among the empty houses. The only life-signs on the surface were the tracks left by the small buggies the villagers had used to make their escape. Jaakh had not bothered to open fire upon the fleeing civilians, there were neither honor, nor material gains in such behavior. The abandoned village was surrounded by dessert for as long as the eyes could see, in every direction. The loose sand-dunes would have turned into hard, frozen tundra had there been any water in the ground, but there was not. The villagers had chosen the driest region of the planet for their colony, but sensor-scans had revealed a narrow mining-shaft within walking distance, it ending in a reservoirs of water-ice a few hundred meters beneath the surface. Nibulus 5 was not in any way a extraordinary cold or hostile planet. It was chilly alright, but neither the atmosphere nor the temperature was harsh enough to require the sealed environment of a spacesuit - at least not at this time of the year.

The Nibulus sun passed across the windshield, filling the cockpit with its yellow rays. While strong in light-intensity, the rays carried little heat. Summertime at Nibulus 5 it seemed, was comparable to a bright and clear winters day at Qo`noS - The Klingon homeworld. The sun passed out again at the other end of the windscreen, the scout continued its circling. Jaakh was getting bored, unhappy about the lack of action. Then the communication-panel started beeping, a welcoming break from this monotony. The new leader of the away-team - Durak of house Kor - was trying to reach him, hopefully bearing good news. Until Dall`ek had made a scout-pilot out of him, the away team had been Jaakh's domain. He had passed it over to Durak because he was the most able warrior in the team. Durak was cut out to be a great warrior one day, but for the time being he lacked proper combat experience of the more hairy type. That, and leadership experience - there had to be a first time for everything. For these reasons, Jaakh was pleased to see that this mission had proven so simple. Durak got to test out how it was to boss the others around, while still remaining in a calm and non-lethal situation. - A perfect situation for an aspiring new leader,

"Jaakh here!" Jaakh said.

"We have beamed up everything of value, no reason to hang around no more"

Durak sounded quite pleased. Judging from his tone of voice, they had found something of great value down there.

"I'm pulling out then"

Jaakh turned of the autopilot, switching to the manual control-rod instead. As he pulled it towards him, the nose of the scout rose towards the blue sky, heading up and away from the impoverished village. If he wanted to do so, it would be much easier to just instruct to the computer to take him all the way back to the shuttlebay. Manual steering, however, had its charm. It felt much better to exercise direct control over the craft for a change, not always using the computer as mediator between him and the raw power of the engines.

The away-team had followed the same path as the booty, beaming directly to the transporter-room. Teleportation was an instant happening, so they had been on board for quite some time when Jaakh arrived. Other then himself, only two people were left to greet him as he entered the room - Captain Dall`ek, and Durak. In addition to the layer of chain-mail beneath the leather vest and pants - the everyday outfit for all Klingon warriors - Durak still wore the full combat-gear. Extra armor-pads had been strapped on to protect the hands, elbows and knees, and he had not yet removed the traditional ba`haleth blade that was strapped to his back. It was the same with the heavy shield-belt around his waist, and the phaser-rifle between his hands. Dall`ek on the other hand, seemed to be having a very relaxed day. Jaakh was surprised to see that he was standing there with nothing but a crude night-robe wrapped around him. Fortunately it was not one of those soft, fluffy ones that such decadent species as Humans and Vulcans used. It was more like a recycled sack made from a crude, hemp-like fabric.

Sensing his curious gaze, Dall`ek turned towards Jaakh with a disappointed look on his face.

"This is the day Kahless the unforgettable defeated Molor and united all Klingons, it is also the day of washing. How could you forget?"

Jaakh was thrown of balance for a moment, surprised by his own mindlessness. Embarrassed, he lowered his head so that he looked down on the light-brown, duranium floor.

"Please forgive my tactlessness master" He mumbled.

It was as if all self-esteem and warrior-pride had been sucked out of him. Captain Dall`ek on the other hand, felt that he was overreacting. He laughed deep and heartily while putting his big, strong hands upon Jaakh's shoulders.

"Ha! Do not fall on your blade old friend!"

He roared while shaking him silly.

"There is enough hot water for everyone!" He assured him, still laughing.

Since Klingons only washed their clothes and bodies once a year, it would be a bad thing to miss out on. Both Jaakh and Durak rushed out of the transporter-room, heading for the storage-bay next door. The big room was filled with wet clothes that had been hung up washing lines that had been suspended between the walls. The big wooden tub however, was empty. Had Dall`ek been wrong in his assumption that there would be enough hot water for everybody? The two warriors approached the tub with disappointed looks on their faces. When they came all the way up to it, they found a note inside:

"Water being recycled and distilled. New round ready at 13.00" It said in the sharp and edgy symbols of the Klingon alphabet.

"No stress" Durak said.

"No stress" Jaakh repeated.

Dall`ek was no longer present when Jaakh returned fresh and clean to the transporter-room. He had probably left for the bridge where he was overseeing the re-construction of the orbital plasma-cannon Jaakh had captured for them before diving into the atmosphere. The destruction of its command-section had rendered the cannon itself harmless, allowing the Fist of Kahless to tow it up to a higher orbit where they were relatively safe from potential counterstrikes from the surface. After a more thorough investigation of the construction, Science officer Sholax had arrived at an interesting conclusion: He now claimed to have found several design-flaws, technical issues that hindered the weapon from reaching its full potential. This meant that he could reduce it considerably in size while actually at the same time increase its firepower. And furthermore: he could do this without enhancing it with Klingon technology, equipment that they did not have to spare anyway. Dall`ek was desperate to increase their arsenal, so when Sholax aired his proposal, he immediately jumped on it. Now he and his team had moved into space, welding, screwing and hammering on the big barrel that floated freely through space at their starboard side. In its current state, it was as big as the Klingon ship, and therefore impossible to mount on to its hull. But if Sholax kept his promise and pulled through, he would have a much smaller product ready in a few days time.

But this was all taking place outside the hull. On the inside, Jaakh had left Durak in the tub after a short bath. He was eager inspect the captured goods, so eager that he had forgotten to dry his hair. It hung long and heavy from his ridged scalp, water dripping to the floor.

"So what did you get?" Jaakh asked the second Klingon present in the room while gazing upon the tall stack of boxes that were lined up against the walls.

The room was filled to the brink, only a narrow path of empty floorspace remained between the teleporter platform, the teleportation-console, and the exit. Some of the boxes were big, some were small, some were made from plastic, others from steel. What all of them had in common was that the packaging had remained unopened. Thanks to tricorders, his question could be answered without taking such steps.

"Meat, lots of it - high in fat and protein. We also took with us vegetables of different kinds"

The broad-shouldered, sturdy and heavily armed Klingon answered. His name was Mudj-Gorad, a rather unremarkable warrior who had served in the away-team for a year or so. He only spoke when he was spoken to, and he had no interesting tales to tell.

"Sounds good. Anything else than food?" Jaakh asked him.

"Some computer-hardware for Sholax to examine, perhaps figure out their language."

"The barrels?"

"Pure oxygen" He responded.

"You have done well, send Durak my compliments"

Despite saying this, Jaakh had actually hoped for something of higher value. Perhaps it had been a unreasonable anticipation, expecting to score big when preying upon the small fry.


	16. Chapter 16: The voyage home

They were back out in the open, rolling away from the mountainside glazier, heading towards the humongous cliff that started a hundred and fifty kilometers ahead of them. If they found a safe passage through, they would eventually get down to the shore of the central lake, at the crater bottom. They were expecting to find some interesting lifeforms there, but up here it was less promising - a dead wasteland of sand and gravel with medium sized rocks scattered around. A constant strong wind rolled across the open landscape, pushing thin streams of dust along with it. The weather seemed to follow a fixed pattern. The wind that blew towards them during daytime shifted to the opposite direction at night. In between came dusk and dawn, calm periods where the wind turned into a confused, whimsy breeze. Jonas liked it much better like that, and he also liked the creamy yellow sky that accompanied it. The thin veil of whitish blue brought about by full illumination was boring, hardly enough to block out the stars. At nighttime it became just like space, the same old pattern of white and black that at all times filled the windows of spaceships and spacestations.

They had been driving for over twenty-four hours now, a full standard day plus a little extra. Jonas felt that he had gotten well acquainted with the personality of the planet during this time-span. When the sun was up, the K`hmynians made frequent stops, going for short walks outside with their hand-held sensors. There were no lifeforms out here, but Yumaar had come across a few veins of metal that had caught his interested. There was gold and platinum here, Yumaar hoped it would be enough to finance his trip. The Federation representatives had no such interests for the time being. Gold had no practical applications, and platinum was not nearly valuable enough to start extracting under the nose of the Klingon empire.

"So what metals do you people look for when you explore new planets?" Yumaar asked while sweeping over a sharp, orange stone with his broom-shaped sensor.

Jonas had tagged along, not bothering to do scans of his own at the moment. This was not really a scientific mission, and there was nothing around exiting enough to arouse his curiosity.

"You have dilithium off course, and then we have latinum. Some traders use it as a currency"

That last word - latinum - Yumaar had heard before. Khark had sometimes mentioned it in their conversations, even though they had none of it on K`hmary. Dilithium, however - was foreign to him.

"What is dilithium for?" He wondered.

"It's a crystal that doesn't react with anti-matter, it flows right through it" Jonas answered.

On the academy, Jonas had learned that antimatter-based engines became much more efficient with dilithium, not having to spend energy on creating thin forcefields within the intermix-inducement-grid. For the time being starfleet had enough dilithium-mines under their control to supply all their spaceships with high quality crystals - a luxury competing civilizations envied them for. It was problematic though, that the indigenous populations of the planets were it was found, often ended up suffering for it.

"You people need to shut up about it if you find dilithium or latinum on your planet" Jonas warned.

Yumaar took a brief break from the screen attached to his high-tech broom, looking up at Jonas instead.

"We wouldn't know what to look for, I guess" He replied.

When he returned his attention to the screen, he froze for a moment, giving it his full attention.

"Nothing to see here" He then concluded.

The two explorers headed back to the truck. Jonas climbed up to the roof where Carolyn and Zin were sitting. Yumaar went in through the hatch that lead to the interior of the truck, the rest of his team was waiting for him inside. It didn't take long to start the engine, and then they on the move again.

The big wheels and solid suspension-system smoothed out the bumps and juts, giving a comfy ride even for the freeloaders on the roof. Time was passed by easygoing chattering, as well as some talk regarding the plan ahead. Yumaar wanted to stay on the surface until he felt that his studies of the planet were thorough enough to satisfy the scientists back home, even though he had no way to make it back on his own. The question arising from this plan was whether or not it would be too time-consuming to help him out on these premises, spending a month or even more in idle orbit around the planet. Jonas and Zin had no problems with it, as the destruction of outpost 32 had left them unemployed and without commitments elsewhere. Carolyn on the other hand, might be needed on board the Enterprise. When Kirk had sent them out here, he had not really given them a fixed timetable, they would have to call him up and ask.

The fast moving sun had almost dropped down beneath the distant mountains at the other end of the crater ridge, causing the sky and wind to shift the same way it had done before. Nightfall came, but they drove on regardless. The truck had all the equipment needed to gaze through the thick blackness of the wilderness, and so did the federation spacesuits. With night-vision turned on they could see the world as clearly as they could in daylight, the main difference being that the ground turned from gray, to green, the same artificial light emitted by the lampposts back in the cave. Exploring this planet had been fun for a while, but now Jonas was starting to get sleepy.

"Should we beam back home?" He asked his team-mates.

Two green faces looked back at him through the protective squares of transparent aluminum. Zin's face was much broader and darker than Carolyn's. Most Bolian males had broad skulls, and Zin was no exception.

"Why not?" Zin replied.

"I call Jeff" Carolyn said.

She opened the lid to the console on her arm-wrist, going through the short list of numbers stored in the menu.

"Jeff here" Jeff said.

Carolyn had made it a public call, so the sound of his voice entered the helmets of Zin and Jonas as well.

"Can you beam us up?" Carolyn requested.

"Can do, can I beam my self down afterwards? I want to go trekking as well." Jeff asked hopefully.

"It's all dark down here now, you will have to wait a few hours"

A pause of silence followed while Jeff digested his prolonged disappointment of being kept away from the surface. Jonas caught himself thinking that Carolyn perhaps had been a bit unfair with him, for during the seven cycles of local days and nights that they had passed on the surface since beamdown, she had not once ordered Zin or Jonas to take his place up at the ship. Other concerns had been more pressing he guessed, and this was after all no holiday.

"Okay, stand up and prepare to be beamed" Jeff finally answered, sounding dispirited.

Everyone rose to their feet as requested, waiting for Jeff to lock on to their positions.

Jonas was first out. When the beam reached him, his body was split into small particles of high-intensity radiation that followed the direction of the beam as the ground bounced it back into the machinery that had created it in the first place. The information contained in the beam was then re-set into physical atoms inside the transceiver. From there, an advanced computer-program used a even more advanced grid of forcefields to put the atoms in their correct spots above the transporter-platform. As the puzzle that was Jonas was pulled apart at the surface, to be rebuilt in space, both versions reached a point where they where complete enough to be sentient. During this split second, Jonas felt the bizarre sensation of being at two places simultaneously. The phenomena was impossible to describe really, but it was quite uncomfortable. As more molecules where split up and beamed away from the original location of the body, the still dissolving remains became emotion-less.

The first thing Jonas saw when his eyes activated within the ship was an intense, burning light. Jonas was overwhelmed and blinded, and even worse: Due to the force-field keeping him together, he was incapable of shutting his eyes. The process of teleportation took no more than three seconds, but that last part of it felt like an eternity. When the forcefield finally decided that he was completely reassembled and ready to be released, his eyes felt like they were set on fire, and his heartbeat was sky-high. Blinded and disoriented, he stumbled forward. It took a few steps before the high-intensity light was noticed by the suit-computer, causing a automatic switch to normal vision. Bubbles of very bright green color never the less remained in his field of vision, seemingly dancing around inside his helmet.

"Hi there" He could hear Jeff greet him.

He was probably standing behind the teleporter-console, but for Jonas everything was a big blurry mess.

"Hi there" Jonas repeated on autopilot, still in shock from the unpleasant experience.

The brilliantly red sofa in the middle of the room stood out from the rest of his surroundings, he aimed towards it on unsteady feet.

"Before you do anything, order the others to turn of night-vision!"

He screamed to Jeff after having collapsed into it. Unfortunately, he was a bit to late. Carolyn was already on her way, a somewhat bleak version of her silvery, body-tight suit had appeared on the platform. She materialized and stepped down in a calm, controlled manner.

"All good?" She asked Jeff while approaching him.

"Jonas here forgot to turn of his night-vision" He replied while locking on to Zin.

"That should give you a lesson" She said while turning her head in Jonas direction.

"Don't they teach you anything on starfleet these days?" She asked him with a hint of irony, not too concerned about his well-being.

Jonas had always found it intriguing to watch someone materializing out of thin air. Once his vision returned to normal, he straightened up so that the backrest of the sofa would not block his view of the teleporter. First, several parallel blue lines appeared out of nothing, widening and stretching until they filled most of the space between the teleporter platform and the ceiling. Small flashes of light constantly popped up and disappeared around them, like miniature versions of twinkling stars. Within this confused field of volatile energy, a faint, limpid silhouette would appear, rapidly evolving within it. The silhouette would be bleak and featureless at first, but then it would turn into a gradually less ghostlike version of the object or person in question. Everything happened in a organic, smooth way that looked both natural and unnatural at once. Like Jonas and Carolyn before him, Zin remained frozen until the procedure was complete, kept in place by a invisible energy-field surrounding his body and freezing his molecular make-up until every single peace was in its correct place, and locked firmly together. His position was a bit tilted, and when he was free to move again he immediately stumbled sideways off the platform, continuing it seemed, a move that had started before beam-up.

"The truck hit a rock"

He explained when he had regained his balance.

When Jonas opened the magnetic seal that kept his helmet attached to the rest of his suit, life-support automatically turned itself of. The constant low humming that had been accompanying him throughout his stay on the surface dwindled away, it was replaced by the continuous stream of gentle beeps and buzzes that made up the backdrop of any active starship. Not viewing the world through the boxy frame of his visor felt pretty good. Since it had happened gradually he had not realized it, but a thin layer of dirt had built up on it, giving everything he saw a veil of brown. The contrast between the dull colors and natural shapes of Nibulus 5 on one hand, and the colorful interior and sharp lines of the ship on the other, became even more striking.

"Uh-hu" Jonas uttered, a comment of sorts, to the drastic changes. The last thirthy seconds of his life had felt like an all-out attack on his senses.

The others took of their helmets as well. Carolyn's blond hair had been compressed and misshaped beneath the swim-cap that had kept it in place. She ran her her fingers through it a few times, fluffing it up. Normally it was tied up into a ball on top of her head, but the cap was to tight for that, and now that it was loose and fuzzy, she looked completely different.

"So what now?" Jeff wondered.

"I was planning to get some sleep" Jonas said.

"Me too. I will call Kirk for further instructions in the morning" Carolyn informed.

"You Humans sleep to much" Zin commented.

All three humans present disagreed, thinking that they had done a hard days work and had earned their hours of rest. Nobody bothered to start an argument over it though. Talking with non-humans, such things were all relative anyway.

Half an hour later, the spacesuits were cleaned and hung up in their normal spot inside the locker-room. Everyone was back in their normal uniforms, they had gathered around the kitchen table for a last snack before falling in. Nobody expected the day to have anything more in store for them, but they were wrong. Just as Jonas devoured his last spoonful of soup, a incoming call caused the communication-panel to lit up. Jeff was sitting closest to it, so he got up from his chair and walked over.

"It's from the surface" He said while seating himself into the pilots chair.

"Yumaar and company?" Jonas wondered.

"Who else?"

Yumaar was feeding both sound and image through to them. The image Jeff brought up on the main screen was filmed by a camera within the exploration vehicle. It was currently aimed in at Yumaar, who was sitting behind the drivers-seat.

"Are you all up on your ship again?" Yumaar asked.

"Yes. The away-team beamed up for a nap. What is it?" Jeff wanted to know.

"The radio-disc back at the servants module snapped up some rather disturbing news that I think you want to see" Yumaar explained.

"Can you run it through your translator, and then send it to us?" Jeff requested.

"That was the plan. I will play it into this channel when ready"

"Recording and standing by"

Jeff pushed a few buttons on the console, leaving the channel open while ending the dialog with Yumaar. With its new configuration, any new incoming data would automatically be brought up to the screen while simultaneously being stored in the data-banks.

They did not have to wait long. The translation-program used by the K`hmynians was as efficient as the ones used by the Federation, both could translate videos much faster than it took to watch them. For all Jonas knew, it might very well be a Federation program - alien pirates and businessmen spread technology and software around the galaxy faster than the official starships of the big empires did.

"Here it comes" Jeff said while pointing at the screen.

He had remained seated in the pilots chair, the other three stayed put in their places around the table.

Dramatic music was pumped through the speakers, underlining a series of three-dimensional symbols that rotated while flying across the screen. It was clearly a written language of some kind, not surprisingly it was unknown to the federation onlookers. The translator had added subtitles at the bottom, so this was no problem.

"Extra news!" the subtitles said in big letters, standard roman alphabet.

The intro faded away, replaced by what probably was K`hmynian anchorwoman sitting behind the desk of a TV-studio. One could not know if she was of the same species as Yumaar and company though, they had not yet seen their faces, and many planets throughout the galaxy harbored more than one form of intelligent life. The woman had her eyes fixed on a point slightly above the angle of the camera, probably reading her lines off a screen positioned above the lens. To the human audience this was a very old-school way of presenting news, kind of like those black-and-white newsreels where all sorts of events were accompanied by a huge orchestra.

"Today, a defensive installation orbiting our colonies at Nibulus 5 was destroyed by a unknown attacker" She said in plain English.

One could see on her lips though, that it was a computer-generated voice-over. A somewhat shaky and crude image grew out of the wall behind he left shoulder. It was a film from the event, shot from considerable distance. The camera tried to aim in on a spaceship of some sort. All one could tell from the clip was that it had a compact, yet aerodynamic shape, and that it had opened fire on something ahead of it. Blue-glowing, oblong droplets were spit out of a cannon attached to it's belly.

"Looks like an advanced plasma-cannon, probably Klingon" Jeff commented, making a qualified guess.

Jonas figured he knew what he was talking about, one did not get to work within the torpedo-bay of a high-profile starship like the Enterprise without first passing through the most advanced weapons-studies that starfleet had to offer.

Just as the camera had stabilized on the Klingon scout, it rapidly zoomed out, loosing track of the unknown vessel. The camera did a slight adjustment before zooming in again, this time towards another object. Since it was moving at a much slower pace, the new object was easier to lock on to. It was a satellite of some sort, a weapon perhaps. It was hovering above a barren and mountainous planet not unlike Nibulus 6, just with less ice and snow. The plasma-volley slammed into a circular module who stuck out of the big, trunk-like cylinder that made up the main bulk. After having burned through the outer hull, the force-fields that kept the plasma-bolts together collapsed inside it, causing violent reactions between them selves and the inner atmosphere. The resulting firestorm swept through the interior, setting the place ablaze. Fountains of pressurized flames shot through weak spots in the hull, while the stream of plasma bolts continued to pound into the rapidly expanding entry-wound.

Then - in the blink of an eye - the module disintegrated into a mix of rapidly expanding smoke and half-molten debris that was either yellow or white-glowing. The attack had been very accurate, the big barrel remained unharmed apart from a black mark where the smaller module had once been attached.

The image contracted again, returning to its place above and behind the shoulder of the anchorwoman.

"Following the destruction of the installation, the unknown attacker blew up two rockets that were launched against it from the surface, as a countermeasure" She said.

This second event had not been caught on tape, so the previous clip repeated itself in the background while the anchor-woman continued to talk.

"After the destruction of our rockets, the hostile vessel attacked Djuun, a surface-based town on the southern hemisphere of the planet"

Another video started, the shape and properties of the ship were a bit clearer this time. The elegantly curved lines of the exterior artwork had obviously been added in order to conceal the brick-like nature of its overall shape. This was a Klingon scout, no doubt about it. At first it plunged down through the blue atmosphere with its stub nose first. Then, the fall was aborted in a sudden, brutal maneuverer that no pilot could survive without inertial dampeners.

The tracking-system controlling the camera was totally confused by the unexpected maneuver. Having lost its object, it moved hectically about for a few seconds, filming nothing but skies and flimsy clouds. Then it zoomed out, probably using a radar to relocate the scout before aiming back in on it. Once relocated, the camera filmed the scout as it followed the dessert-floor at a altitude of about hundred meters. Then, the film shifted to a different camera, one that was standing on the roof of a small, rudimentary building made from plastic and aluminum. It was one out of many similar structures, a dense little village that looked a bit like a spaceship that had been cannibalized for shelter. As the camera made its sweep across the humble cluster of houses, Jonas did not understand what connection it had to the previous clip. The explanation came when it tilted upwards, aiming in on the scout as it made a slow and gentle circle above the village. It seemed like it was patrolling the area, maybe searching for something.

"Klingon raiders" Jeff commented with certainty.

The image shifted again, adding the final evidence that verified the theory. This time it was a surveillance-camera attached to the upper corner of what appeared to be a huge warehouse. Having detected movement within the room, it immediately zoomed in on the distant figures. The resolution was too low and the light was too dim to make anything out from the dark silhouettes, the camera was destroyed before it got a proper picture.

"Goods for over ten million credits were taken in the attack, over one hundred if we add the cost of transportation. Intelligence have reasons to believe it was ordered by prince Yumaar of the Northern Kingdom"

"That's our friend, isn't it?" Jeff wondered.

"It certainly is" Carolyn confirmed.

The anchorwoman continued to report while Jeff and Carolyn were talking, Jonas struggled to block out the noise.

"Prince Yumaar left earlier this year for what Northern authorities claim is a exploratory expedition towards the sixth planet in the system."

At this point the antennas of the anchor-woman laid themselves flat back against her black hair. When she continued to speak, her voice had shifted from neutral to angry.

"But we Southerners know that Northern technology is way to primitive to handle such a long trip. It is therefore evident that this is a cowardly attack upon our colonies, ordered by the fat and petty king Shyyrom, who is jealous because he have no off-worldly colonies of his own!"

The feisty little lady had gotten all worked up over her own monologue. On in-breath she slammed her nimble hand into the table, continuing in a state of outrage.

"The Southern Kingdom can not let this crime go unpunished! A fleet of several spaceships have been launched to hunt down the vile criminal Yumaar, and steps are already taken to launch counterstrikes against the Northern kingdom unless they agree to compensate us for our losses!"

Yumaar had not recorded any further, the program ended abruptly.

"These K`hmynian ladies are sweet when they are angry" Jeff joked.

Nobody felt like laughing.

"If Yumaar introduces us to the authorities on the surface like he planned to, further escalation of the conflict can be avoided" Zin said.

"Good idea, but if so we shouldn't wait to long These Southerners seem pretty aggressive" Carolyn stated, speaking the exact words Jonas were thinking.

When the prince appeared on the screen again, he was still sitting in the cockpit of his exploration truck.

"Is this the work of these Klingons you speak of?" He asked, going directly to the point.

"It certainly is" Jeff answered.

"In that case we need to go home, explain everyone what's going on here"

"Agreed" Carolyn said.

She had gotten up from her chair, now moving closer to the screen.

"But you don't need to take your whole team with you, the rest can stay on the surface and finish the job if you want to. We can bring them home later" She added

"If that's okay with you, I'm all for it." Yumaar agreed.

He thought for a second before he spoke again:

"If you have room, I want to take the servants with me to your ship. There is no use for them on the surface"

Now it was Carolyn's turn to think. Was there enough room for so many people? Could the oxygen recyclers on board handle it? - These were crucial questions. She turned towards Zin for answers. As the engineer on board, he would know.

Their eyes met, "No" Zin said tersely.

"No" Carolyn forwarded when she faced the screen again.

"Can I bring Kesh along?" Yumaar inquired, not knowing whether he should address it to Zin or Carolyn. Carolyn turned around again, Zin nodded in her direction.

"Okay, one person. Can you bring your own food? I don't know if our cuisine will please you" She warned.

"Can do" Yumaar confirmed.

"Okay, we will beam you over when you are ready"

"Are you sure that thing is safe?" Yumaar asked sceptically.

Khark and the Ferengi had used those suspect teleportation-devices as well, but he never understood how they dared. Being reduced to radiation, and then put together at another location? Common sense suggested that this was something to be avoided.

"Sure, we use it all the time" Carolyn tried to reassure him.

"I will check my alternatives first. Call you later"

* * *

><p>Checking for alternatives proved a time-consuming task. Yumaar didn't call them back for several hours, and when he finally did they all missed it, sleeping heavily as they were. Morning came, and with morning came Yumaar. He was flying up from the surface in what looked like a enclosed steel-bucket. The miniature-craft was probably made in order to transport supplies between the mother-ship and the surface, - the federation used similar solutions where radiation made teleportation difficult. Jonas followed its trajectory into orbit with sleepy eyes. The coffee had not yet kicked in, the shower was occupied, his hair was all messed up. - In short: He was not at all feeling representable. As such it was a good thing that Yumaar was not heading directly towards them. First he needed to dock with the module they had left in orbit, this was where the person he called "Kesh" was hanging out. When done, The Hidden Explorer would approach them, find some way to bring both Yumaar and Kesh in through the airlock - everything in order to avoid teleportation.<p>

"I hate Human food!" Zin proclaimed for the eight time during their time together - Jonas had kept track of it.

"You should acquire a mini-synthesizer with these rotten Bolian dishes you long for programmed into it, just keep it in your traveling bag and bring it along wherever you go" Jonas proposed, not taking his eyes of the flying bucket on the screen.

"Good idea, but it wouldn't be much use here anyway. Hoognoks don't use synthesizers, remember?" Zin reminded him.

"And you should remember that this is Hoognok food, not Human. We are not that much into raw vegetables"

Jonas snapped back at him while taking another bite of his carrot. He chewed slowly, keeping his attention on the screen. He was not entirely trustful of K`hmynian technology, if anything went wrong they needed to beam Yumaar out of there as fast as possible. Paying attention could in other words become a question of life-or-death. The engines that pushed the small object upward were pretty powerful considering their small size. Jonas had wanted to study them closer, but the technical scanners had failed miserably at this task. The confused report that the computer had made for him claimed it was a mass-drive, but also that it was a chemical rocket - two mutually exclusive concepts. It was a bit too early in the morning to look into it. Should he decide to do so later, he might not understand the details anyway.

Jonas heard the sound of an electric door sliding open, followed by bare feet tapping across the floor.

"I'm taking a shower" Zin said.

Jonas did not protest as Zin turned around and headed for the now vacant bathroom. Jonas was not left alone for long, the same light steps that had walked out of the bathroom approached him from behind.

"Slept well?" Carolyn asked softly while gently rubbing his shoulders.

It felt quite pleasant, even though he was not at all tense.

"Very well" Jonas replied.

"Is that Yumaar?" She wondered.

"Sure is" Jonas confirmed.

"Looking forward to see their homeworld" She said with easy-going enthusiasm.

Yumaar and the metal bucket surrounding him had now broken through the atmosphere. No longer constrained by drag, the engines could afford to turn them selves off. The momentum built up during its period of continuous burst was sufficient to climb the remaining kilometers that separated it from stable orbit without spending any more rocket-fuel. Yumaar had made a elegant travel-plan, his course would bring him into an orbit that correlated perfectly with the orbit of the bigger vessel, almost parking him into the docking-port of the servants-module without the use of thrusters.

"Wait until he has docked, then bring us closer" Carolyn ordered.

"Can you do it? I want to freshen up before they arrive." Jonas requested.

"But so do I! My hair is all wet, and I haven't done my makeup" Carolyn protested, sounding frustrated.

"You should have done so before giving up the bathroom" Jonas argued.

"Doesn't matter, I'm in charge, so you will be the one too look like a bum!" Carolyn said, still aggravated.

"Thank you very much for the compliment" Jonas replied ironically.

The conflict was resorted eventually, everyone had found the time to freshen up by the time Yumaar's bucket locked on to their docking-port.

"Okay, pressurizing now. Line up and look sharp" Zin said.

He pushed a button on the console before rising from the pilots chair, running towards the others who had gathered in front of the circular port-door at the other end of the room. The door rolled open, revealing two small figures in body-tight black and brown spacesuits on the other side. As usual, their faces were concealed by egg-shaped helmets and the golden, reflective visors that occupied most of the front-section. Jonas looked towards the female one first, thinking about how odd it was that the curves signaling femininity were similar for so many species. The broad hips, slim waist and round, breasts were accentuated by the tight suit. There were four buttons located around the neck, where the helmets was sealed to the rest of the suit. All four had to be pushed down in a special succession before the helmet could be removed.

As the two K`hmynians started working on it, everyone in the welcoming-party wondered what these people looked like beneath their armor. Would they look anything like the anchor-woman in the news? Or were they completely different? Whatever the answer might be, it was only four, three, two - one button away. Yumaar finished first, the locking-mechanism keeping the helmet in place opened with a sharp, distinct sound. He pulled it off slowly, using both hands. The skin on his neck was blue, pretty similar in color to Zin's. The shape of their skulls did not follow the oblong, egg-like shape of their helmets. When the helmets came all the way off, they could see that they had hair on their heads, and antennas - just like the anchorwoman. Yumaar's was short and black, Kesh's was brown and a bit longer. All in all, these people looked very much like Andorians, Jonas thought. The main difference was that Andorians had roughly the same size as Humans, and that they all had golden yellow hair.

It was also something about the way they moved and talked. Neither Yumaar nor the others in his team seemed to exhibit the same type of aggressive pride that - according to rumors - could make Andorians so difficult to handle. Rather, these people seemed very easygoing, almost carelessly relaxed.

"Welcome to the Hidden Explorer" Carolyn started, breaking the ice.

Yumaar looked around the room in which he was standing, his eyes focused on everything else than the people standing in front of him.

"You people have odd taste when it comes to decoration" He then commented.

"We are under cover, camouflaging as another species" Carolyn tried to explain.

"So this is not what you really look like?" Yumaar asked.

"It is. We are not wearing our costumes"

Yumaar found the answer amusing, his dark-blue lips curved into a gentle smile.

"Ha ha! Carnival and politics! You must show me your costumes some time!" He said laughing.

"How fast can you take us home?" The one named Kesh wanted to know.

"Half an hour or so, but we need to plot out the road ahead first" Carolyn said.

"It's quite simple. We go home, and then I call my dad" Yumaar answered.

"Is that the king of the Northern Kingdom?" She wondered.

"Quite so" Yumaar confirmed.

"Sounds good to me" Zin said.

"What about defensive installations? We don't want to waste anybodies ammo" Jeff pointed out.

"That is, hm - very considerate of you. The Western and Southern kingdom have some orbital cannons I believe. Depending on the range of your communication gear, I might give them a heads up before we enter, explain the situation"

"I'm sure we can figure something out" Jeff meant.

With two newcomers on board, the hyper-social layout of the ship became a bit too crowded and intimate for Jonas taste. Had the ship been of a federation rather than a Hoognok design, everyone would have their own quarters, as well as one or two extra for guests. But Hoognoks did not value privacy, so luggage, mattresses and everything else had to be scattered around the huge living-room. Yumaar and Kesh removed their belongings from the interior of the bucket that remained attached to the docking-port, then they found them selves an idle corner to set up in.

"Who wants to take us in?" Carolyn asked.

During their time together, they had never really decided who it was that was their main pilot. Taking a ship from A to B was quite easy with modern console-layouts, so there had been no need. The abilities of people like Jonas - an ensign with specialization in piloting - was most useful for tricky maneuvers through badlands and asteroid-fields, unexpected events and combat. Considering the nature of the job ahead, such skills might be needed? Potentially hostile aliens... orbital weapons-platforms... Hmm.

"I do it" Jonas volunteered as soon as he finished this thought.

He walked over to the empty pilots chair and sat down.

Gently, he brought the ship out of orbit.

"Nibulus 4, is it?" He asked.

"Make it so" Yumaar demanded with royal authority.


	17. Chapter 17: Hostile intentions

"Heat and pressure increasing" Sholax reported.

The energetic science officer was back in the bridge after several days of continuous work on their new weapon. Now it was finally attached to the belly of their ship, and ready for testing. Hydrogen was currently being transformed into plasma within the heating-chamber behind the barrel, soon to be shot out and away. The Klingons had stuck with the original design, using a formation of projectiles that where pushed out simultaneously with the plasma, containing it in an electro-magnetic grid. To Klingon eyes this was a very old-fashioned and primitive form of plasma-technology, but they did not carry with them the parts needed to replace it with a more modern system. If everything worked according to plan, the projectiles would keep the field stable until it slammed into the asteroid ahead of them, hopefully releasing enough kinetic and thermal energy to destroy it. It was a big rock, several kilometers in diameter. Modern deflector-shields were rough, so unless it was capable of completely obliterating it, this weapon would be useless against enemies from competing interstellar empires.

"Activating barrel force-field" Sholax continued.

Dall`ek was following the digital clock up on the front screen. Fifteen whole seconds had passed since the heating-chamber had been activated, and the barrel was still prepared for the transfer. This weapon was a bit slower than what he was used to, but depending on the firepower unleashed, it just might be worth waiting. - He had to at least give it a chance.

"Opening plasma conduit" Sholax went on.

The first kilograms of finished plasma was released into the barrel. Since both pressure and temperature were sky-high, the process was carefully and slowly executed. Sholax stood ready with his finger on the abort-button, ready to hit it at a moments notice if anything went wrong.

"Pressure building, preparing pulse-cannon" He said.

The pulse-cannon was not a separate weapon-system, but rather the firing-mechanism that would push the plasma out of the barrel at the proper speed. A millisecond before launch, the lid covering the forward end of the barrel was opened while the electromagnetic barrier that kept the plasma away from direct contact with the duranium was switched off. That way, it would not compete with the powerful electromagnetic pulse that was about to be unleashed behind it, pushing the plasma ahead of it until it reached an escape-velocity of ninety-eight kilometers a second. A negative side-effect was that the barrel would get thinner for each burst, it would be slowly eaten away by the scorching hot plasma.

"Energizing grid-projectiles"

The new launch-mechanism gave a much higher exit-velocity than the K`hmynians had achieved with their original configuration, so the firing-mechanism for the magnetized projectile launchers that circling the plasma-muzzle had undergone several modifications in an attempt at keeping up. First, the ordinary gunpowder had been replaced with a more powerful explosive, something that had forced Sholax to replace several parts of the gun with hard duranium taken from their reserve of emergency-plating. Without it, neither the barrel nor the firing-chamber would withstand the force of the explosions, making it a single-shot system at best. This improvement had tripled the speed, but it was still far from good enough. Therefore, a ram-accelerator had been added to each barrel, and after some testing and failing he had managed to give the projectiles the speed needed to keep up with the plasma.

"Firing!"

The recoil pulled the ship backwards, throwing everyone forward in their seat. The dense ball of light rushed into space, rapidly shrinking until it blended in with the stars. As it dimmed away, Dall`ek shifted his attention to the number that had appeared on the lower right edge of the main view-screen. He was sorry to see that the speed had not exceeded Sholax's expectations. Ninety-eight kilometers a second was far from optimal, and since the plasma radiated away its energy during transport, it would loose its destructive edge after about half a minute of flight, limiting their range to little over two thousand kilometers if used against an enemy with proper shielding.

"Impact in seven seconds" Sholax informed.

Dall`ek straightened up in his chair, preparing himself for the firework ahead. Such events were always exiting, specially for the weapons constructor. Sholax was all tense and sweaty, looking into the forward view-screen with his face frozen in a strained expression. Dall`ek sensed his nerves and liked it. If nothing else, it at least meant that he took his job seriously.

The bridge-crew waited in silence as the camera zoomed in on the asteroid.. The rough stone rotated slow and drowsily on its axis, ignorant to the violent death that awaited it. Then... A flash of light - bright, clean and silent. The Asteroid had been pulled apart faster than their eyes could register, it was not until the camera zoomed out considerably that they could spot big chunks of it flying away from each other.

"We have a good weapon here" Dall`ek approved.

"I like it" Jaakh agreed.

"Me too" His navigator Naq`Da concurred.

"I want to do a second test, dissolve the field before impact in order to create funnel-effect" Sholax requested, not taking any time to bask in the glory of his achievement.

"Go ahead, see if you can expand the field so that we make the debris-field glow" Dall`ek ordered.

Sholax immediately started working on it. He had to be fast, or else the remains would glide so far away from each other that the debris-field dissolved completely, making it impossible to scratch all of it with the same bolt.

Dall`ek leaned back in his chair again, his mind already piling up with other problems. The refitting and testing of their plasma-weapon had proven that the natives were close to develop weapons that were efficient enough to match the Klingon arsenal. If this happened they would become a harder target to plunder. They might in fact start plundering neighboring systems them selves, taking booty that would otherwise belong to the Klingon warrior caste.

Perhaps he should prevent this from happening?

Perhaps he should destroy some of their big cities and infrastructure from orbit?

Put them back a century or two?

Under normal circumstances his ship would carry enough photon torpedoes to do so, but most of them had been destroyed during the clash against the Human ship, and all he was left with now was the limited arsenal of the scout. This new plasma-cannon could not penetrate into atmospheres, so that was out of the question.

"New plasma-bolt preparing" Sholax said, breaking into Dall`ek's tactical analysis.

Dall`ek did not respond. Instead, his attention was drawn towards something Naq`Da had brought up on the edge of the main view-screen. It was the SUBDAR display, and it showed an object that approached them at several times the speed of light.

"We got company!" Naq`Da enlightened the others.

"Analyze unknown vessel!" Dall`ek automatically responded.

"Klingon bird of prey" Naq`Da answered impressively fast.

"Class and name!" Dall`ek demanded to know.

The ship seemed to head right for them. As it got closer, more and more info was brought up above its icon on the SUBDAR. It was traveling at warp 6, and it was a K't'inga-class battle cruiser - the biggest type of Klingon warship ever built. Dall`ek's ship was a raptor-class, a lightweight-design that originally had been built to serve as long-range scouts. It surprised Dall`ek that such heavy military equipment had been sent to this distant outskirt of the empire, if it had been sent at all. Even though the government encouraged it, not all Klingon warships choose to register them selves into the Klingon defense league. There were those who roamed the vastness of space on their own, plundering, trading and exploring as they saw fit. This was not illegal as long as the crew and captain were of the warrior-caste, the only caste allowed to wield advanced weaponry.

"The sensors have found the identity-chip, but they have a hard time locking on to it" Naq`Da informed.

"Those buggers are too small and cheap" Dall`ek complained.

Always eager to save money, the Klingon government had not invested in proper identity-chips for the ships built. Not that it was very important, but it could be annoying sometimes, not knowing what clan or KDL-operative that came at you before they got uncomfortably close.

"Accessing identity" Naq`Da finally said.

But Dall`ek had to wait even longer before the scan was concluded.

"This is the Daak Clanship" Naq`Da said when the computer had finished its analysis of the chip.

"A Clanship, eh? Male or female?"

"Female sir. According to the databank it belongs to a Ursull Daak, sister of Gow Daak, the clan-leader"

"I like it, hail them as soon as they enter range" Dall`ek said with a broad smile on his lips.

The prospect of female company of such a fine blood-line lifted his mood considerably.

In his eagerness to shake the secrets out of the approaching ship, Dall`ek had completely forgotten about the plasma-bolt being prepared for launch beneath and behind them. A flash of bright light passed over the forward camera port as it flew out and away.

"Plasma away" Sholax informed after it had happened.

"Shut down the cannon" Dall`ek ordered.

"Yes sir" Sholax acknowledged.

While they waited for the newcomers to enter communication-range, the plasma-bolt followed the plan set for it. When the forcefield dropped, it expanded into a plasma-storm that heated the debris-field up as it blew through, turning each stone into a beacon of light that glowed towards them in shades of deep red and dark orange. It was in fact quite beautiful, and the spectacle proved that the weapon was powerful enough to cook large groups of smaller ships, destroying them completely if they lacked proper shielding. Dall`ek turned towards Sholax and gave him a acknowledging nod, Sholax returned the gesture, looking as proud as any Klingon could get.

The Daak Clanship had already passed the only gas giant in the system, now they were slowly reducing their warp level while continuing their approach. When warp dropped to zero, they were well within communication-range, but Dall`ek hesitated to call them. After all, they were the ones seeking him out, not the other way around. The Clanship then engaged their forward impulse-engines, decelerating rapidly while fine-tuning their approach. They fell nicely into the same high-orbit Dall`ek's ship held above Nibulus 5, entering visual range soon after.

"We are being hailed" Sholax said when they had made a relative full-stop a kilometer to their port side.

"Finally! On screen!" Dall`ek growled.

The lady who replaced the SUBDAR-screen and the glowing remains of the asteroid, was foxy in a experienced kind of way. Unlike Humans, Klingons of both sexes found roughly textured and thick, deep-ridged foreheads attractive. The same went for sharp and outstanding teeth, fury eyebrows and broad jawbones. The face appearing on the screen was definitely the face of a Klingon warrior, but it was never the less a female Klingon warrior, and the fine details in facial and bodily features that separated them from Klingon men, made all the difference in the universe.

"Daak Clanship to unknown Klingon vessel!" She roared towards them, a healthy dose of aggression in her voice.

Dall`ek could not help himself from taking a brief look downwards, focusing his gaze on the soft and luscious region of bare skin below her chin. The screen did not go far enough down, but what little one could see of her cleavage hinted towards a busty chest below. Knowing that a prolonged gaze would annoy her, he was quick to pull back up, instead meeting the sharp scrutiny of her eyes .

Several small wrinkles had formed around them, telling him that this was a lady with her best years behind her. The same could be said about Dall`ek though, so this didn't make her undesirable in his eyes.

"Isn't our identity-chip working?" He asked her.

"You have none!" She replied strictly.

"It must have been blown away than. I am captain Dall`ek of house Dalius, and this is my ship, the Fist of Kahless - KDL member"

"You have taken quite a beating, against who?" She demanded to know.

"A Human ship, the Enterprise"

"Intrusion?"

"Yes, this system is contested, but we drove them off"

"You did not kill them?"

"They sneaked up on us from behind while we destroyed one of their outposts"

"Are they near?"

"We have seen no trace of them within the system"

The fast and efficient interrogation came to an end. Ursull leaned back in her broad captains chair, satisfied with the answers so far. Her mask of strict skepticism never the less remained.

"So what are you doing here?" Dall`ek asked, not quite so aggressively.

"Plundering! Any good tips?"

"Why so far out? There are several good worlds further in" He wondered.

"Been there, done that. Rumors say this system recently entered Klingon space"

"Correct, we have just looted it" Dall`ek informed.

"This planet?" Ursull wondered.

"This planet" Dall`ek confirmed.

"This planet seem dull and dead. I want us to plunder someplace together, have you checked further in?"

"I..."

Dall`ek was baffled by the proposal, even though it was in fact exactly what he fancied. - He had just not expected it to come so soon.

"Wait here while we check for small-pickings - we are running a bit low on food, and I see two warehouses on my screen." Ursull added, before he found the time needed to form a more proper response.

The lady was obviously in a hurry, hungering for glorious battles and fresh booty.

"Don't go for the Southern one, we have been there" Dall`ek helpfully informed.

"Call you back" She said.

When her image faded away, the time had come for a more thorough and collective exaltation of his science officer.

"Big applause for our engineer, the best in the Klingon army!" Dall`ek loudly proclaimed while rising from his chair, lifting his sword-arm towards him.

He was usually very scarce with positive feedback of this type, but what Sholax had accomplished here was undoubtedly impressive, definitely worth an applause. Dall`ek and his crew got up from their chairs and clapped their hands together while roaring

"Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" with their deep, bass voices.

Sholax seemed surprised, not knowing what to make of himself. Her turned and twisted about on his chair for a while. Then he jumped up from his chair in a spastic move and mumbled something nobody could hear. He was acting all shy and weird, definitely not used to the attention.

When he dropped back down, silence fell upon the bridge. There were no more tasks to fulfill, not before the newcomers had finished their raid on the surface. So what to do?

Food was the answer. Dall`ek always thought about it when the bridge went slow.

"Carry on, I will be in the mess hall" He said while rising from the captains chair.

Dall`ek didn't like the K`hmynian food they had stolen. Both the meat and the vegetables seemed to have a sugary sweetness embedded into it. Disappointed, he shoved the plate away from him.

"I hate it" He told the slender, young warrior who was sitting by the table beside him.

He was struggling with one of the more conventional food-packs who they were running low on. They were made out of dried chunks of meat in some sort of fatty soup. After removing the plastic cover, one added a few deciliters of water to the box before cocking it in the microwave-oven. The best thing was to have live animals to slaughter before meals, but the ship economy was tight at the moment.

The youngster said nothing, but Dall`ek was in a talkative mood at the moment.

"Calor, impulse-operator - is that it?" He asked.

"Right sir, this is the second month under your command"

"All good at impulse?"

"Nothing to report captain"

The females were very efficient in their plundering, Dall`ek barely found the time needed to eat a ration-pack and exchange a few words with his subject before his communicator beeped, summoning him back into the bridge.

"We have been thinking" Ursull told him, following him with her eyes as he moved from the entrance-door to the captains chair.

"Always dangerous" Dall`ek said as he dropped down, feeling he had came up with a cool answer to her claim.

"You have no shields" She stated.

"Lost them against the Humans, was a though fight" Dall`ek responded.

"Therefore you are useless in battle" She logically concluded.

"We mounted the remaining photon torpedoes into the scout vessel"

"We know, we have scanned you. We have a scout as well"

"And?"

"We send them ahead of us, prepare the path before we bring the landing-party into teleporter-range and plunder their homeworld. I can help you get your shields up."

"I am grateful" Dall`ek said.

Since Ursul was such a impressive lady - big ship, good ancestry, impressive character, even a seat in the high council - Dall`ek underlined his words with a deep bow. When his head returned from the floor, Ursull had vanished from the screen.

* * *

><p>And so it happened, that Jaakh was called out to his third mission as scout pilot. This time he would have female company, something that made his heart beat a bit faster than normal. What he feared though, was that the huge social gap between them would strain their relationship. The house Jaakh belonged to was not considered a great house, but this was nothing to be ashamed of. There were several hundred Klingon houses and the high council had no more than twenty-four seats. The great houses were richer and bigger than the others, but as far as Jaakh knew, all Klingon houses were - for the time being at least - considered honorable.<p>

Jaakh activated his thrusters, pushing himself through the open gate. A thousand bright and twinkling stars bid him welcome at the other side of the gate. They were accompanied by Nibulus 5, a round ball of yellow sand and mountain clusters. Scattered among the uneven surface were streaks of white snow and flimsy clouds. Jaakh had taken a liking to this planet, he wanted to spend more time flying between its impressive mountaintops, plunge deep into its systems of canyons and valleys. Other than the stars and the planet ahead, there was the big but lazy Nibulus sun. It was positioned 62 degrees leftwards of the planet, each degree was marked as a thin blue line that ran horizontally across his view-screen. It glowed towards him with a shade of yellow that was so deep it almost turned orange. It was in a good mood today, no black marks on its smooth surface.

The newcomer of the day was the monstrosity called the "Daak Clanship". The computer informed him that it was 214,3 meters long and that it stretched 152,4 meters from wingtip to wingtip. As a natural comparison, the Fist of Kahless was only 109 meters long, and the wings that separated the warp-nacelles from the aft body-section were no more than fifty-five meters across. Two powerful disruptor-cannons had once hung from their underside. Now only black marks and bulged duranium remained, wounds that bore witness to their violent destruction. The Daak Clanship had four such cannons, as well as two torpedo-bays - one at each end so they could hit enemies sneaking up from behind without turning. They also had something that the scanners had named a "concussive charge launcher" - a description Jaakh felt matched the traditional disruptor-cannons pretty good. But the technical info that the scanner-array had supplied him with, told a different story. It was something about a polarized meta-field generator, it sounded very experimental.

Whatever it was, this ship was definitely capable of whopping the asses of those idiotic Humans and the so-called "science vessel" that they were plodding around in. A normal K't'inga-class ship would actually be even stronger, carrying twice as many disruptor-guns as this one did. But the machinery that supplied them with energy took up most of the interior space, and in this ship the firepower had been reduced in favor of a bigger storage-bay. There was nothing odd about this. As a Clan-ship that operating outside the jurisdiction of the defense league, its main goal was to extract valuable commodities from the colonies, not to participate in coordinated campaigns of conquest. It was a double-edged sword though. As non-members, member-ships of the defense-force had no obligation to help them out if attacked. In fact, rouges were not even allowed entrance to the coded subspace-channels used by the ships of the defense league.

Having studied the Daak Clan-ship for a while, Jaakh tapped its icon on his SUBDAR-screen and zoomed his front camera in on the big saucer-section up front. All battle-cruisers had been built with these oddities, even though it made them somewhat similar to the dreadful Human ships. The Humans built their crafts to look white, clean, and comfortably business-like. It was so utterly soulless! Yack! Not looking like the enemy was a good incentive for avoiding them, but on really big structures the saucer-shape was simply more efficient when it came to maintaining proper living-conditions during warp and sharp turns. It had something to do with gravity-distribution and inertial-dampning-fields.

Now, Jaakh was waiting for the other scout to emerge from their shuttle-bay. Since he failed to spot it on his screen, it was most probably hidden behind the oversized torpedo-bay that stuck out like a round ball below the saucer disc and the line of small, luminous squares that encircled it. Jaakh found it a bit decadent to add such unnecessary details as view-ports. In his opinion, Klingon ships should be as minimalistic as they were militant. The Klingon empire needed to expand and to wage war, not moving around looking all fancy with shining windows and whatnot. It was perhaps okay for a Clanship though, one of the plus-sides of not participating in the defense league was that the captains could arrange their ship as it pleased them.

Just as he was starting to get bored, his companion for the mission ahead, popped up from behind the torpedo-bay - just like he had foreseen. It was a K`toch-class single-pilot scout, just like his own. When new from the factory, these ships were only equipped with a mediocre plasma-turret, but... Nope, nothing had been added except extra ammo. His scanners counted five reserve-clips of ammo, giving a total of 5000 rounds instead of the 3000 these scouts came with upon delivery. Jaakh himself was down to 2721, the missing 279 rounds had been spent destroying the alien plasma cannon and the surface-to-space missiles sent to avenge it.

While Jaakh was spying on her weaponry, the other pilot was trying to get in contact with him. Upon letting her through, a young and beautiful face popped up on his screen. He was immediately aroused by her appearance, all kinds of hormones and other mysterious chemicals were released into his bloodstream, putting him in a very different state of mind than the relaxed, somewhat sleepy modus he had been in while waiting around. Jaakh neither could, nor did he want to hold back his sexual urges. The instincts overcoming him were way to strong for that. He growled towards the young lady, she hissed back at him, exposing her long, sharp fangs. Then she set her ship in motion, rapidly accelerating towards Nibulus 4. Jaakh tried to catch up on her, but she climbed up to full impulse faster than he did, locking them at a distance of a few hundred thousand kilometers.

"Lets burn some metal!" She screamed through the intercom.

* * *

><p>Carolyn's team dived into the atmosphere just as the relentless plague known as the Klingon Empire started its virgin strike against the K`hmary homeworld. The scanner-array of the Hidden Explorer detected no Klingon beam-downs to the surface, and since they only counted two scouts, the federation team had to conclude that this was to be a orbital strike only. A preparation perhaps, that would open the way for a bombardment against military installations when their mother-ships arrived. As soon as the ground-based military installations had been sufficiently weakened, several away teams would be beamed down on a mission of plundering. This was the way of the Klingons, a pattern of death and violence that was repeated wherever they went.<p>

Yumaar had told them that the orbital cannons of the other kingdoms had been made as a defensive countermeasure against long-range missiles carrying nuclear warheads. The Northern Kingdom had gone for a more low-tech solution, using a system of ground-based counter-missiles that would blow up the enemy nukes above the atmosphere. To make it short - Yumaar explained - their general plan was to use their own nukes to out-nuke the attacker before re-entry. Since it would take a nuke to blow up a nuke, the Northern Kingdom had stockpiled an arsenal of nuclear missiles equal in number to the combined arsenal of the Southern and Western Kingdoms. Despite these extensive military systems, the Federation onlookers was not at all surprised by the humiliating onslaught the plasma-cannons of the other kingdoms now suffered against the Klingon invader.

Yumaar was very anxious about the situation, afraid that he might be blamed for this as well.

"First I need to call dad, then we have to fix a meeting with the other Kings" He said from his upright position in the red sofa.

He had spent almost half an hour there now, thinking hard on the problems ahead while scrutinizing the kitchen-wall with intense vigor.

"Do you have a cell-phone or something? We should be within range of the communication-satellites" Jonas answered.

The more advanced civilizations of the Alpha quadrant used a pretty standardized system of sub-space channels that were easy even for outsiders to navigate within. In comparison, the electromagnetic radio-based systems used by the rest, tended to be chaotic jungles of exotic sound and junk-info. If Yumaar had a local cell-phone, he would in other words save Jonas a lot of console-work. The only thing he had to do was to find one of the satellites compatible with the cell-phone, and then he could use the communication array of the ship to aim the signal of the mobile towards it. If done correctly, the satellite would pick up the signal and transfer it directly to the king's phone the same way it did with any other cell-phones.

"I do, I have his personal number. Moment"

Yumaar got up from the sofa and walked over to the corner where he and Kesh had put their bags.

Jonas remained seated in the pilots-seat, currently observing his tactical screen. The twin-clusters of plasma-cannons were steadily dwindling away from it, but the action was taking place several thousand kilometers away, and the Klingons would continue to ignore them as long as they failed to see through their charade.

Yumaar returned with his cell-phone, a elegant little thing that was much better looking than the boxy communicators used by starfleet.

"Before you can make the call, you have to help me out with something" Jonas told him, looking straight at his blue face. Yumaar was so small that their heads were on eye-level, even when Jonas was sitting and Yumaar was standing right next to him. His servant Kesh was even smaller. When down on the surface, Jonas and his companions would be giants in a world of blue midgets. Jonas was not looking forward to walking around feeling oversized, slow and clumsy.

"Yes?" Yumaar said.

"I want to know what satellite to use"

"I have no idea, can't you use your scanners?"

He could, and he did, but it was a time-consuming task. It would have been much easier, had Yumaar been able to point him in the right direction. Figuring out antique communication-systems was difficult, and there were a lot of satellites to shuffle through. To start with, the only thing he knew about the satellite he was looking for, was that it probably was located somewhere above the northern kingdom. It would need a geo-stationary orbit in order to to keep the northerners in touch with each other throughout the day-cycle, but even with these restrictions there were a lot of candidates down there. Starting his scan, Jonas learned that some of the satellites only transmitted internet, while others where doing imaging and surveillance. One was spying on the satellites and installations of the other kingdoms, two were dead, three were star-gazers, one was keeping track of several species of large sea-creatures that they had installed transceiver-chips into. The thirteenth satellite he scanned fulfilled an unknown function, but based on the schematics he got up at his screen, Jonas theorized that it was looking for some kind of fantasy-particle that its builders hoped would explain the ways of the universe. This was a widespread hobby among pre-warp, first-stage space-faring civilizations.

Within this anarchistic jungle, Jonas even found some stealthed killer-drones who probably had been sneaked into the northern hemisphere by the Western and Southern kingdoms. Made in order to be invisible on the crude radar-arrays of the Northerners, these satellites would hunt down and destroy the surrounding satellites if activated. Since the use of radar would blow their cover, this had to be done on visual sight only, forcing them to get into visual range before opening fire. Therefore, the killer drones were equipped with powerful engines, a huge telescope-camera and a small yet powerful cannon that fired explosive projectiles - all built into the flat and crystal-like hull. The sharp edges and streamlined design gave these drones a predatory look that made Jonas think of them as the most fascinating type satellite found within this rich fauna. He could not tell Yumaar about it though, the rules of starfleet obligated him and his teammates to do their very best to avoid tampering with the local balance of power.

Jonas had been hanging over the consoles for a long time now. He was completely mesmerized in his work, clicking his way through image after image of rudimentary schematics that the technical scanners drew up for him.

"Any luck?" Yumaar asked him, impatient about the results.

He had crucial matters to attend to on the surface, Jonas could understand his frustration about being kept in orbit by technical details.

"We can just head down to the royal palace and try to find him" He added.

"Lets wait a few minutes more, I have narrowed down the potential candidates to one third" Jonas replied.

His eyes and mind returned to the console and the job at hand, but then something happened that could render further efforts pointless.

"We are being hailed by one of the satellites" Jonas informed the others.

"On screen" Carolyn automatically ordered.

The problem was that it was not really any screen to put the incoming data up on. An attempt at doing so would look like a peace of ever-changing modern art, and this was not the right time for such amusements. The computer analyzed the incoming radio-waves as sound-only, suggesting that they put it through the speakers. Jonas immediately complied, not seeing any reason to quarrel with it.

"This is the N.K Space-agency, ground control. You are a unidentified vessel in Northern space, respond at once. - Over"

The translation-program that Yumaar had brought with him had been added to the language-bank of the ship, making the translation between K`hmynian and English fluid and effortless. The only problem was that all the K`hmynians where given the same type of overly correct school-teacher type British accents, recycling the same voices over and over. The fellow currently trying to reach them for example, had been given the exact same voice as Yumaar had. If they were going to socialize further with the K`hmynians, this problem would have to be fixed somehow.

"This is the Hidden Explorer responding. We represent the United Federation of Planets, and we have come here to drop of one your citizens"

Jonas was quite pleased with his introduction. He had managed to form a short and simple sentence that passed on the name of the ship, the organization it belonged to, and their main purpose for hanging around - the three most important things to mention when introducing your self to a new species. As far as Jonas could tell, this had been as if taken straight out of the book on first-contact situations.

A period of silence followed, Carolyn used the break to get up from her chair and walk over to the console.

"Let me do the talking, I'm specialized in these things" She said.

"But I did all right? Didn't I?" Jonas wondered, a bit nervous.

"It's all good, but now you are entering my area of expertise" Carolyn replied.

"You are the boss" Jonas said, giving in to her demand.

The two of them changed places. He sat down by the kitchen table, she took control of the cockpit console.

"N.K Space Agency again, over" The surface-station said after the brief pause.

"Hidden Explorer here. We come in peace, and we have with us a prince Yumaar, son of King Shyyrom. He is the leader of your nation, we have been told"

Carolyn spoke slow and clearly, but the response was never the less more silence.

"They are a bit surprised I guess. I am not expected to be here for another six months, as least" Yumaar explained.

He was standing a few meters behind her, leaning against the movable chair of the copilot, a chair that - for some reason - hardly ever was used. Everyone preferred either hanging over the main pilot - usually Jonas - telling him what to do and not to do, or they sat by the kitchen table, commenting while chewing away on their huge supply of vegetables. Hoognok food was so boring, the next time they wanted to masquerade as some non-federation species, Jonas would definitively vote for one with a more mixed diet.

"Is that prince Yumaar talking in the background?" The man from the Space Agency wanted to know.

Yumaar walked closer to the cockpit dashboard and leaned over it. The microphone was hidden somewhere among the screens and instruments, so his voice came out clearer on the other end when he spoke again.

"This is indeed prince Yumaar speaking. I need to get in touch with the King" He verified.

"The King is currently at his summer residency in Knoxx" The Space Agency answered him, still using the same voice and the same British accent as he did.

"The one in the Cuwubian forest, or by the main river?" Yumaar inquired.

"Cuwubian forest" The twin-voice replied.

"I can pass on the call for you" It then offered.

"Please do" The prince agreed.

"Seems like we are going home after all" Yumaar's servant Kesh said while the line was being reconnected.

Jonas had not seen her around for a while, something he found odd - considering the small amount of rooms in the ship.

"Where have you been?" He asked her.

"Zin have showed me around the engine room, it was funny" She merrily answered.

A few seconds later, the new connection had been established. A shaky voice filled with hope and doubt reached out to them through the speakers.

"Yumaar, is that you?" It asked, afraid to be disappointed.

"This is me alright, how are you doing old man?" Yumaar said, smiling his broadest smile.

"I am so glad you are back!" The King screamed, thrilled by the return of his son, and relieved that it was really true.

"But what are those annoying sounds in the background?" He added, turning from bliss to careful skepticism at the blink of an eye.

"It's a federation translation-program, it's a bit annoying, I know"

Since the sounds of the translator put itself on top of the original language, the listeners had to block out the language that they did not understand. The original K`hmynian could never the less be heard beneath the British-English, and vice-versa.

"Are aliens with you?" The king asked.

"Yeah, three of them. They brought me and Kesh home, the rest are busy exploring Nibulus 6"

"Did they have anything to do with the attack against Nibulus 5?"

"No, but they know a great deal about the attackers, I think they can help us out" Yumaar answered.

"Our first task is to prove that we didn't do it. The other Kings are suspicious, and now they claim that we are shooting down their satellites in order to clear the path for our nukes" King Shyyrom said.

"That is terrible!"Yumaar screamed, his antennas shooting out to each side of his skull - as if they were repelled by each other.

Even though he had suspected such a development, he was never the less horrified by the grave news. It took him only a split second to pull himself together though, and when he did, he had a constructive proposal to make:

"We need to fix a meeting with them, perhaps bring the Humans along and let them talk"

"Agreed. Can you get down my place?" The king requested.

"Will do" Yumaar confirmed.


	18. Chapter 18: A Klingon love story

"WHAT THE...?"

Jaakh was completely unprepared for the sudden barrage of plasma that came hailing towards him. There was no time for a evasive maneuver, his shields buckled under the enormous pressure of a dozen direct hits. A wave of aggression built up inside him, causing him to instinctively squeeze the trigger of his flight-stick. With plasma-bolts flying both ways, the deflector shield of his adversary started to crumble as well. Fearing that her shield might be the first to give in, Derminea made a bold move. After activating her tractor-beam, she set it to charge until the moment it almost exploded. When she dropped the containment field and sent it out the barrel, it had become a concentrated bolt that she launched against her navigational deflector, giving it a powerful push forward. It was well calculated move, the wall of gravitons passed beneath Jaakh's navigational deflector and collided against the remains of his main shield with tremendous force. The already strained shield generator could not handle the extra stress, it collapsed in a explosion that filled his cabin with smoke and sparks.

Jaakh's craft shook violently, he was thrown hard against the safety-belts that kept him in his chair. As he pulled himself back into position, three alarms went off - all crying out for his attention. The loudest one warned about the destruction of the shield generator, the one with the sharpest and most unpleasant howls warned about the now stripped and unprotected hull, and a third one with a somewhat deeper, bass-like sound, warned about fire that had broken out within the cabin. That last crisis was the first to be resolved, a well-aimed jet of white fluid that was shot out from the automated extinguisher in the ceiling took care of it. Unfortunately, the white fluid turned into even more smoke as it evaporated against the dying flames. Jaakh coughed and cursed, the cocktail of chemicals that had been released into the air stung as sharp needles in his lungs. When the gas-mask fell down from the hatch above his seat, he immediately grabbed it and pulled it gratefully over his head. He would not have to wear it for long though, the air-filters had already sensed the problem, and now they worked hard to suck up out the unwanted elements.

Jaakh threw himself over the trigger again, determined to take a cruel revenge. A stream of plasma bolts were hurled against the other scout, but in that very same moment, Derminea launched herself out and away, disappearing in a flash of light. When she slowed down again she was at safe distance from the plasma-turret. The bolts Jaakh had fired continued away from the battle-zone in a straight line, disintegrating harmlessly after five seconds and close to thousand kilometers of flight. Jaakh could do nothing but nod in approval, it had been another elegant combat-move on her part.

"You are slower than a gros-dah!" Derminea screamed over the comlink, referring to a very slow beast that lived in the mountains of Qo`nos, the Klingon homeworld.

"Tahqeq!" Jaakh snarled back at her.

In Klingonese it meant either a person that was generally dishonorable, or a traitor.

He knew that this was not true though. She was just playing with him, testing his skills and valor. So far he had done miserably, he had to admit. He had allowed himself to get hit by her deflector-launch, and then he had let her get away unharmed. Now it was time to pull himself together, he had to sharpen his senses and concentration.

"Come nail me then!" Derminea teased him.

Nailing was a traditional form of capital punishment to which the Klingon courts often sentenced traitors. But in this setting, and with the tone of voice she used, Jaakh suspected that it had a double meaning.

"I will make you regret this!" He replied, trying to sound more angry than he really was.

"You wont catch me!" She said mockingly, prodding him to follow.

"I will make you eat those words!" Jaakh growled back.

Had this been empty space, the hunt ahead of him had become long and boring, a race between two identical vessels who both pushed their engines to the brink of collapse. Clever as she was, Derminea had thought this over. She was leading him straight into an asteroid-field filled with ionizing radiation, a type of radiation that made SUBDARs and scanner-arrays useless. Knowing that he had to stay within visual range, Jaakh put his impulse-engines to max acceleration, adding on the hind-thrusters in order to increase his speed even faster. The asteroid-field ahead of them was so densely packed that it should have clustered into a planet long ago. Unless a planet-formation was indeed taking place somewhere inside, there had to be other gravitational forces in play, forces that hindered the rocks from clustering. These thoughts rushed quickly through Jaakh's mind as the dark wall of ominously looking boulders grew bigger on his view-port.

His SUBDAR-image got more distorted and unstable as he got closer, and his sensor-screens failed on him one after the other - the aggressive radiation made them give in and go black. Simultaneously he was closing the distance to Derminea, who had stabilized at one quarter impulse a few thousand kilometers ahead of him. Soon she would have to step on the brake, it would be suicide to enter the asteroid-field at a speed higher than a handful kilometers a second. Having this in mind, Jaakh started to slow down before she did, continuing the drop in velocity even after he had gone below her speed of one quarter impulse. Some of the distance he had gained on her was lost, but eventually she came to her senses as well. She turned around and made steep deceleration at the last possible moment, ending up at a speed of ten kilometers a second right before entry. She disappeared for a moment as she curved around the first asteroid, but Jaakh was on her tail.

He regained a direct line of sight at the other side of the rock, just in time to see her dive in between the next pair of obstacles. The twin asteroids weighed several hundreds thousand tons each, and their gravitational pull attracted them to each other. Jaakh felt that his speed was way to high already, but he had no option but to increase it, should he make it through the rapidly closing gap. With a grumpy and unwilling sound on his lips, he engaged his thrusters. He slipped through unharmed with about ten meters of clearance at both side. Behind him, the stony lovers slammed into each other in a crushing embrace that sent stones and gravel swooshing past him.

The flow of adrenaline made him bolder, so he increased his speed even further in order to close the distance between them by a few extra kilometers before they arrived at the next line of asteroids. These were all a bit smaller, and the gap between them should be wide enough to allow him to curve his way through. Ten kilometers in front of him, Derminea engaged her thrusters yet again, increasing her speed so that it matched his. The gap between them stabilized at a distance of seven kilometers, even a pilot as ridiculously aggressive as Derminea would not dare to go faster at this point. As they got closer, more and more asteroids grew up on the forward monitor, making the field denser for each passing second.

"This is so not going to work" Jaakh whispered to himself.

He could no longer picture himself maneuvering elegantly through the rocky maze, not without going to an almost full stop first. He had to revise his plan, and he had to do so fast. Searching his brain, he could only find one alternative lurking around in there. He still had his navigational deflector intact, as well as his plasma-turret. Using those two, he could do a so called "Panhesian-move", a Klingon technique evolved in order to force a ship through areas of dense material.

He turned his ship downwards and engaged his thrusters in a sudden, yet fluid move. When he had pushed it into a position below Derminea - where she would not be in his line of fire - he straightened up and re-stabilized his course with one hand, while maximizing the output of his power-plant with the other. Both hands were literary dancing across the consoles, working as fast as his brain could think. The hectic button-frenzy left him sweaty and out of breath, but at the end of it he felt prepared for the threat that approached him.

He had invested all the extra energy from the now overburdened power-plant into the navigational deflector that stood out as an invisible shield in front of the craft. More energy would make it denser and more robust, properties that soon would come in handy. Working as rapidly as he could, he then instructed the computer to mark all the asteroids on collision-course with red cursors. These asteroids would hit the navigational deflector on their way towards him, but the deflector would only be able to take two or maybe three hits before collapsing, even in the reinforced state he had put it in. It could take many more however, if he softened up the asteroids with his plasma-turret first. Each plasma-bolt was several thousand Celsius hot, hot enough to evaporate considerable amounts of the asteroids. And if he invested enough shots, even the heaviest components would turn into molten lava that could be pushed away with ease. Having transferred the turret to manual control, he clung his right hand around the control-rod, waiting for the first red circle to enter firing range. When it did, he rapidly aimed in on it it's center and squeezed the trigger. Unfortunately it didn't shrink away in a cloud of vapor at the first volley, as he had hoped it would. This was hard, massive rock all the way through.

"K`ha-thugg!" Jaakh screamed, that was Klingonese for "fuck".

His finger remained tightly wrapped around the trigger, a fast-moving line of green lights traversed the space between the barrel of the cannon, and the dark shadow that kept growing on his screen.

The center of the asteroid turned from dark-brown to dark-red, then lighter until it became yellow. The heat seemed to spread across the surface, red veins grew out from the impact-zone, lighting up new areas. Just before it slammed into the invisible spear of the deflector, the center had turned into a pulsating wound of sharp whiteness, and the rest of the asteroid was a mix of yellow and red. Jaakh had spent several hundred rounds of plasma to cook it into this soft state, but the deflector took quite a beating regardless. Huge amounts of gravitons were shook loose from the field as the asteroid disintegrated against it, and when the remains gathered back into formation, it was considerably weakened. The event was repeated on the next asteroid, and then the next one. His deflector was now down to thirty percent strength, and he would soon run out of ammo. The fourth one ended - not surprisingly - with the deflector collapsing.

Jaakh cursed as he turned off the howling alarm. Since Derminea had taken out his shield-generator, he could not produce new gravitons to enforce the field, and this left him permanently stripped of protection. The next asteroid would slam right into his hull, so he prepared for it by investing the now unemployed energy-output from the fusion plant - that was on the brink of collapse too - into the hull-integrity field. That was his last line of defense, a defense that was somewhat unsafe against bigger objects. At this point he was in real, actual, mortal danger, and the asteroids field did not seem to get any less dense ahead of him. Further more, he had lost track of Derminea. Adapting his actions to the new situation that had arisen, he turned around and engaged his forward thrusters, halving his speed before disengaging them. He remained in the same trajectory - holding a speed of almost seven kilometers a second - but now he felt that the risk had been brought down to a more acceptable level.

The computer continued to put red markers on the asteroids on collision course. Determined to save his last rounds of plasma for more worthy enemies, Jaakh curved his way elegantly between the big and sharp-edged boulders. This was a slow but fun way to traverse an asteroid-field. It was okay though - at this point he had lost all hope of catching up with Derminea anyway.

The field ended as abruptly as it had started.

As Jaakh emerged back into somewhat normal space, his instruments reported that he had several hundred thousand kilometers of clean space between him and the planet that had appeared ahead of him. Physically speaking, it was quite small, but its gravitational pull was impressive. The cloud of asteroids that he had left behind orbited around it, forming a ring - it turned out - that encircled the whole planet. The planet was interesting in a gray, pure and industrial kind of way, almost as if it was an artificial construction made by some alien civilization with too much time and resources on their hands. Only a few lines of steep canyons in strong yellow and red deviated from the monotone and flat grayness that dominated the surface. The canyons curved and turned into each other, forming a uneven web that was scattered across the surface. Curious to rob the odd looking ball of it's secrets, Jaakh started a chemical analysis of the surface. The information that his scanner-rays came back with after having bounced of the planet and returned to the array, made his eyebrows jump high into his thick and bumpy forehead. Iron! Lots and lots of iron! Continuing as deep as the scanners could penetrate!

Wow!

Since the planet lacked even the slightest trace of an atmosphere, most of it had been left untouched by the elements. The exception was those strange canyons where it had corrupted into crispy mountains of yellow and reddish rust. A possible explanation was that they were dried out rivers that had evaporated into space a long time ago. Jaak's scout continued forward, gaining speed as it fell into the gravitational well of the planet. His sensors estimated that it would peak at 0,7 G on the surface, making this the densest planet Jaakh had ever laid eyes on. It was no bigger than Praxis - the moon of Qo`nos - and still the gravitational pull was four times as big, making it four times as heavy as well. Impressive indeed, and perhaps an important discovery for the empire? Jaakh did not have the habit of keeping track of such things, so he had no idea if the empire was in dire need for new sources of iron. It could be, and if so he and Derminea now had the opportunity to make a lot of people really, really happy.

And the surprises didn't end there. As he aborted the fall downwards and put his scout into low orbit around the planet, a gravitational distortion suddenly occurred. The instruments that monitored the surface now claimed that the planet had eased its grip around his scout, throwing it up and out of orbit. Jaakh switched to the belly-camera of the ship, hoping it could enlighten him on this mysterious event. The landscape that was revealed below was so extreme that it scared him. He held his breath while feeling his stomach sink. It was a crater so big it felt like it could suck him in at a moment notice, like a black - no, a red hole - hiding within the planet. It was in fact so big, that the word "crater" was misleading. Somebody or something had taken a huge bite here, a bite that had left the planet in a state where its overall shape no longer could be described as round. Just like the canyons, the crater was covered in rust that started out as a yellow skin on the top, turning reddish further down. At the bottom it was almost black, making it look like those nasty wounds one got from the Human phaser-rifles.

Jaakh did not want it, but he had to get closer to the scary looking hole. He had a hunch that Derminea would be down there, and there were also scientific reasons to consider. Telling himself that he had no choice, he took several deep breaths, eventually overcoming his instinctive fear. The scout shook violently as it splashed into the atmospheric pond that had gathered within the crater-walls. Subterranean pockets of gas and water had probably been released into the crater upon impact, dig-out, detonation - or whatever it was that had produced it. Beneath the top-layer of ozone, there was a mix of water-vapor, oxygen and argon. The metallic surface had reacted violently with this mix, giving it its flesh-wound appearance. Jaakh's flight-path was disturbed by a slight vertical gravity-pull produced by the steep walls of the crater, and several of his instruments were distorted by strong electromagnetic fields. He figured that it was best to make a slow and careful decent, keeping himself in the exact center of the crater, where the gravitational distortions leveled each other out.

The air that rested below the top-lid of ozone, started hard at a pressure of one standard atmosphere, increasing as he dropped further down. The temperature followed a similar pattern - thirty Celsius and climbing. In fact, every number on his monitor-screen seemed to be increasing, except those who counted radiation-levels. The ozone layer had taken most of the sting away from the swollen and angry Nibulus sun, a sun that seemed uncomfortably close this far into the system. Radiation levels continued to drop as he fell deeper into the wet and hazy soup of oxygen, water and argon. A few hundred meters above the ground he engaged his thrusters, making a gradual deceleration that ended in a perfect touch-down upon the crispy layer of rust that covered the crater floor. The temperature was too high to allow water to gather as ponds on the surface, so it was all floating around in the air instead, clogging his field of vision. The fog had actually been denser higher up, but down here it had thinned out again, increasing his visual range from five to fifty meters.

With his scout parked, Jaakh started a full rotation with the topside camera, revealing a landscape that was open and flat in all directions. He could not see any of the crater walls off course, he had landed in the exact center of the crater, so they were several hundred kilometers away. As the camera was near completing its circle, what appeared to be an artificial object came into view. It was shaped as a long egg, sharp at both ends. Four thin legs of metal kept it high above the ground. He had not spotted it on his scanners while making his decent, so to just land right on top of it was kind of like finding that famous needle in the haystack. - Without really looking for it, one might add.

But it had happened, and the fact that it had happened, meant that it was time for a little stroll.

Getting the space suit on within such a cramped cockpit was somewhat tricky. It was simply not enough space to wave his arms and legs freely about, so he kept bumping his head and limbs into the many sharp edges of the room. Installing a separate airlock into a vessel of this miniature size was off course out of the question. Rather, the whole cockpit had to function as one. After pushing the button that eventually would open the hatch in the ceiling, the air-pumps started sucking the inner atmosphere into pressure-tanks who would store it while the near-vacuum that had been established was replaced with the local variety of air. As hot steam poured into the cockpit from the vents that had opened, the laser-projected screen within Jaakh's visor kept him informed him about the change in temperature and pressure. It stabilized on eighty-one Celsius and 0,7 above normal pressure. It was hot and clammy, but actually less so than he had expected so close to the Nibulus sun. Depending on the age of the crater, it was theoretically possible that life had evolved down here. Jaakh imagined small worms that crawled slowly across the surface, spending their days sucking rust-devouring bacterias from the thin flakes of red iron. Or maybe he would stumble across some simple plant-life? - The moist here would be good for mushrooms.

When everything was ready, the hatch opened. He climbed up on the roof and climbed back down again on the left side of the cockpit. The first thing he noticed as his thick soles hit the crispy surface, was that the air within the crater was very still. His best guess was that the crater was too small to form a proper weather-system. As he walked through the pale smog, the grains of rusty iron that crackled beneath his thick soles, were the only sounds to break the heavy silence. Not before he had arrived by the foot of the alien object, did he realize that his scanner was not within the holster of his utility-belt.

Sigh... Nothing to do but turn around and...

Something pushed him - hard! His feet lost contact with the ground, he found himself spinning on his axis while lying horizontally in the air.

"Huh?" He uttered while staring into the whitish skies, too confused to be scared.

It felt as something had ran straight into him, his shoulder hurt from the powerful shove. His body continued to spin, he rotated downwards, and then up again. As red ground was about to give way to white sky yet again, he got a glimpse of his attacker, a figure with feminine curves, wearing the same type of spacesuit he did.

When he hit the ground, she was immediately on top of him. Her small right hand was clutched into a fist that slammed into hit his helmet as hard as she could do it. Had his visor not been in the way, she would have given him a black eye.

"Got you!" She screamed in playful bliss, mighty satisfied with the success of her sneak-attack.

She had brought a stun-gun with her in her utility-belt, and now she was about to grab it with her left hand. She was either planning to actually knock him out, or point it at him as a symbolic gesture of victory.

Jaakh however, had other plans.

"You are in so much trouble" He said, grabbing her hand before it could reach the handle of the gun. She tried to hit him again with her free hand, hoping that her next punch would - as through some kind of miracle - knock him out. There was off course, no chance of that happening. Jaakh secured a firm grip around her and threw her up on his shoulder. Klingon females where quick and agile, much stronger than both sexes of weaker species such as Humans and Vulcans. They were however, no match for their male counterparts.

"What was that you said about traitors deserving to be nailed?" He asked her in a humorous tone of voice, thinking back on their earlier quarrel.

"It is you that should be nailed!" She screamed while using both hands to pound as hard as she could against his back. It actually hurt quite a bit, the suit was not stiff enough to completely dampen her continuous pummeling.

"Ha! Now that would be a strange sight!" Jaakh responded, trying to block out both the disturbing images her words were forming in his mind, and the painful blows. He succeeded at both, keeping a tight grip on the vile creature as he carried it towards his ship.

"So, are you prepared to be conquered by a mighty warrior of the Qonossis clan?" He said merrily.

"Your clan is the worst collection of weakish trash to ever wander the galaxy!" She mocked him.

"And yours is a bunch of corrupt bureaucrats!" He snarled back at her.

Exchanging insults was fun and all, but Jaakh was eager to get on to the more juicy parts of the action. Besides, that relentless pondering against his back was starting to really get on his nerves. Knowing that something good was waiting for him, he sped up the pace of his steps, hurrying back to the scout with his booty. He longed desperately towards ripping of the thick wrapping of her spacesuit, and feel the hot, soft body that was waiting for him inside it. There was off course a slight chance that she really didn't want him, but if so she would very soon start to kick way harder than she did now. Klingon mating-rituals were kind of rough, but there was never the less a sharp line between rape and romance.

* * *

><p>The sun rose early on Nibulus 3, and with the sun came intolerably high heat. The air outside the cockpit was rapidly heating up, approaching one hundred Celsius already. When they had dropped down the day before, they had landed in what probably was a rather chilly afternoon of eighty-one Celsius, and from there on it had decreased slowly after the sun disappeared beyond the edge of the crater-wall. As day turned into night, the temperature-drop had continued steadily until it reached its lowest level of thirty Celsius just before sunrise. Now the huge and menacing sun hung directly above them, filling half the sky. Even though the thick layer of ozone stopped a lot of the radiation, but the intense light had no problem cutting through the thick atmosphere, making the rusty plains that surrounded them so bright that it hurt to look at.<p>

"Uhu!" Jaakh said, shocked by the unexpected sight.

Had he known that the view-screen would flare up like a exploding photon torpedo the second he turned it on, he would probably have thought about it twice. Even though he turned away from it, the unpleasant image got enough time with his eyes to wound his field of vision, filling it with colorful dots that continued to dance around in front of him.

"Computer! Dim down the image!" He ordered.

The computer started on it just as he finished the sentence. The strong yellow light died out, no longer forming a funnel-shaped beam that flooded the narrow cabin in sharp sunlight.

"Bad weather?" Derminea wondered.

She was lying face-down on the thin mattress that he had rolled out on the floor. The woolen blanket started just where her bare back stopped and her tight bum began. Since Klingon females didn't wash that often either, her hair was stiff and unruly - a thick, black and fuzzy mess that stood out in all directions. Jaakh had no problem with that, in fact he liked the sharp smell that fumed from it.

"Yeah, it's heating up out there" He answered her while turning towards the view-screen again.

It was safe to look at now, their surroundings had been dulled down by a layer of dark-orange that took the sting away from it.

Derminea turned over on her back in a lazy movement, exposing her well-shaped and soft breasts. Jaakh had been wild about those the night behind them, fondling and kissing them. Now he felt that he had gotten his dosage of that for a while, but he still found them mighty pleasing to look at. Slowly, he rotated the pilots-chair around so that he could have another peak at them.

"Did you do a scan of that thing yesterday?" He asked while looking down on Derminea, referring to the egg-like structure outside.

Her head was only a centimeter away from colliding with the metal grid that covered the densely-packed machine-room in the back, and her feet disappeared beneath the pilots-seat that Jaakh was sitting on. Her body and the mattress she laid on covered pretty much all the floor-space in the narrow room, and her hair flooded the rest in a black carpet. This room was barely was enough for one person, to bring a guest along was to push the limits of its design.

"So are we all about work now?" She replied, somewhat sharply.

"I love my work, that's why I'm curious" Jaakh answered.

"I need more cuddling first" Derminea said in her most inviting tone of voice.

"I'm all about cuddling" Jaakh said tenderly.

While more cuddling took place, the sun passed slowly over the crater, heating the atmospheric pond that surrounded them up to a peak of 156 Celsius. This was well within the limits of what their suits could handle, but if their superiors asked about them, it could work as a nice excuse for staying put a bit longer. As long as they exaggerated a bit and added a hundred Celcius more to their report, they would be free to pass the hours of daylight with more pleasant activities than following their orders.

* * *

><p>The days on Nibulus 3 were short. Too soon, the temperature had dropped back to the same eighty two Celcius it had held upon arrival the day before. The sun had disappeared from the off-white skies above them - it was time to get out.<p>

"This way" Derminea said, walking ahead of him.

The heat made her shape flicker, as if she was walking through running water. Jaakh started running in order to catch up with her, feeling a sudden fear of being left alone in this hostile environment. The alien object that they were approaching was flickering too, a phenomena that probably would pass as the temperature lowered another twenty Celsius or so.

"You know, if this thing turns out to be valuable, we can take it with us" Jaakh said while coming up on her side.

The short run had made him a bit tired and out of breath, he excused himself by thinking that most of his energy had been drained by their nightly activities.

"Might be" Derminea answered.

They walked on in silence for a while, the alien object growing bigger as they closed in on it. Jaakh had taken with him the tool-box from the scout - just in case they felt like disassembling it. Within normal gravity it would have weighed him down considerably, but in this gravity of 0,65 it was no stress. On top of the crater, the gravity was actually 0,05 Gs higher, meaning that the distance between the crater-opening and the crater-bottom was 1/14th of the planets overall radius. That was pretty extreme, if nothing else it was a good story to brag about when he came home. Could this be the biggest crater ever discovered by the empire? And what kind of gigantic super-meteor would it have taken to make something like that? If at all physically possible? He could only hope that the object ahead of them contained some answers.

They arrived at the foot of the structure, Jaakh looked up at it while fetching his tricorder from the holster. This time at least, he had remembered to bring it along. The oblong and silvery egg-shape rose about ten meters up into the air, starting four or five meters above the ground. The rack that kept it in the air consisted of a metal belt that curved around it, just below its widest point. Four thin metal feet grew out and downwards from the ring, continuing it seemed, down into the ground.

"Any guesses?" Jaakh wondered while his tricorder collected data.

"Impossible to tell, it doesn't look Human or Romulan" Derminea answered.

"Tholian perhaps? Do you think this planet is hot enough for them? It might be recording weather-data for potential colonists"

By the time Jaakh had finished the sentence, the scanner had already brought in some interesting info for him. The silvery egg had some very powerful electromagnets built into it, as well as magnetic lenses and pulse-amplifiers that could harness the energy into precise beams of magnetic energy. When used against a magnetically receptive surface such as this iron-crust, it could shake the iron apart, turn it into fine gravel or small boulders that were easier to handle for miners.

"If so we need to wait for them and kick their asses when they get here. We can't accept Tholian colonies within Klingon territory" Derminea said, sounding very determined.

"I wholeheartedly concur" Jaakh replied, but most of his focus was directed towards the results who continued to tickle into his tricorder.

"Something has activated inside it" He informed as it happened.

Upon detection, a subspace transceiver located beneath the pointy top of the egg, had awoken. Now it was sending off some kind of report to god-knows-who, Jaakh prayed to the ancient gods that it was not his tricorder that had activated it.

"Trouble ahead?" Derminea asked.

"Probably. Its sending subspace-code into space... And now we are being filmed!"

The tricorder could see straight through the aluminum shell that covered its interior machinery, so it had no problem locating the camera. It was positioned near the top as well, just below the subspace transceiver. A tiny portion of the hull had been charged with the proper particles, turning it into the same type of transparent aluminum that were used to make view-ports on spacecrafts. The tiny camera-lens peaked down on the two Klingons through the opening, transferring its images directly to the transceiver.

The area in question was so small that Jaakh would never have spotted it without the tricorder, but now that he knew were to look, he quickly found the right spot to aim at. His trained hand reached for the disruptor-pistol in his utility belt. He grabbed it took aim at the camera in a fluid, elegant move. When he squeezed the trigger, a rapidly moving energy-bolt was released from the muzzle. Upon impact it burned its way through the aluminum, destroying the camera on its way through. The transceiver above it was knocked out as well, thick black smoke poured out of the topside hole that was created by the explosion.

"Definitely trouble" Derminea concluded.

"Guess so, we need to report this right away. Do you still have your ship?" Jaakh asked.

"Yeah, I cloaked it. It's parked it right beside yours"

And so the brief shore-leave that they had granted themselves, ended. The two scouts soared up and away, leaving Nibulus 3 and its crater behind them.

Space opened up beyond the ring, becoming big and empty again. From here on they could travel back in a straight line - unless their respective motherships had moved elsewhere that was. The easiest way to find out was to call their captains and ask, so Jaakh opened the communication-screen and clicked himself into the right connection. Dall`ek was not at his post in captains chair, so the message was forwarded to his hand-held communicator rather than the big screen at the bridge. Therefore, Jaakh got no image through - only the voice of his captain.

"Your favorite pilot is on his way home" Jaakh said happily when he heard the click on the other side, followed by the heavy breathing of his boss.

"That is about damn time. Did you and Derminea have any fun?" The gruff voice wanted to know.

"Plenty, we visited Nibulus 3, and made a remarkable discovery. I don't know if you have been updated on that"

"Ursull just told me. It was something about a planet of iron, is that what you found?"

"Precisely, is iron a scarce commodity these days?"

"Definitely. All the duranium goes to the warships you know, so the cargo-freighters are left with carbon-steel. According to the latest update in the databank, iron has become the most expensive component in that alloy"

"Well, those days will soon be over. But I am afraid the planet is contested. We found evidence of an alien mining-operation, and I'm afraid they might be coming back"

"Have no fear my fellow warrior, if this thing is big we will get all the backup we need"

"It is pretty big my lord, the whole moon is solid iron, 0,7 Gs of it"

"The emperor will be pleased"

When the conversation ended, Derminea was hurrying away from him at full impulse. She was already way beyond visual camera-range, and now the white dot that represented her on the SUBDAR was getting fainter while holding a steady course towards the upper edge of the round screen. Jaakh marked it and ordered his scout into pursuit, a simple way to avoid unnecessary button-pushing.

Jaakh wanted to stay in the Fist of Kahless for a while, rest out in his bunk and perhaps grab one of those awful ration-packs. His boss however, had other plans for him. The scout was now entering the shuttle-bay on autopilot, and the cockpit was empty. How come? The answer was that Jaakh had been beamed out to accompany Dall`ek on a trip to the other ship. As his body reassembled within the twin force-field a few kilometers away, he found himself staring directly into the same type of beige, metallic surface that most of the walls and ceilings within the Fist of Kahless was made of. Upon release he immediately started exploring his new surroundings. Jaakh roughly estimated that the teleporter-platform he stood at was big enough for forty people at once, and there were room for forty more in the open floor-space in front of the gate, a gate that - when retracted into the walls at its left and right side - was wide enough for rows of ten warriors to pass through.

As such, the Daak Clanship could flood a hostile ground-installation or ship with troops much more efficiently than Dall`ek's smaller raptor-class ship could do. This was a property that mirrored the greater number of warriors it carried within it. The Fist of Kahless housed a single away-team of eleven well-trained and well armed men. The Daak Clanship on the other hand, had seven full squads of forty women each, that could be unleashed upon the enemy - still keeping the ship itself fully manned. Many species found it odd that Klingons had ships in their fleet with only females. Ferengi females were hardly allowed to go outside their homes, Cardassian females spent their days on marketplaces and cafeterias, and Human females were seldom found within away-teams - preferring more peaceful lines of work. Klingon females on the other hand, bonded through exploration and plundering - much like Klingon males. There were fewer female than male ships roaming around Klingon-space though, pregnancy and childcare drew many away from battle.

Captain Ursull Daak was standing in front of the broad gate, her daughter Derminea Daak by her side. Both of them wore a long skirt and blouse made from a robust, silvery kind of fabric that never had gone out of fashion. Jaakh could not remember the name of the fabric, only that it had been developed a long time ago to absorb hand-held phase-fire. These days the disruptors that had replaced them were so efficient that no physical armor light enough to wear could give satisfactory protection. As often with Klingon fashion, technological obsoleteness had not been enough to kill it off. Hardened leather and chain-mail didn't help much against modern weaponry either, but it was widely worn regardless.

Dall`ek walked down from the platform, Jaakh followed discretely behind. This was primarily a meeting between the captains, so he figured that he should keep a low profile unless his opinion was called for.

"It's good to meet you face to face" Dall`ek said, giving the other captain his most charming smile.

"And you too, captain Dall`ek of house Dalius, we have much to talk about" Ursull replied pleasantly.

"Absolutely" Dall`ek agreed.

"To the meeting-room then"

After speaking, Ursull turned resolutely around. The gates opened for her when she marched towards them, her daughter and the two guests fell into line behind her as she walked through. The transporter-room it turned out, was positioned at the end of the main corridor, a corridor that - not surprisingly- was taller, broader, and more lively than its counterpart at the "Fist of Kahless". Good looking warriors of the more attractive sex were moving graciously along the sidewalks, many of them chatting with each other while heading for their next posts. The meeting-room was located within the huge saucer-section up front. In order to get there, they had to pass through almost a hundred meters of corridor. A line of huge doors was built into the walls at both sides, following the sidewalks all the way up to the saucer-disc entrance at the far end. Jaakh guessed that the rooms they covered were dormitories for the crew, and that the officers dwelled in the saucer-section up front, were they would be closer to the bridge. Most other species would have built a turbo-lift or tram to speed up transportation a bit, but not Klingons. Building such devises within starships was considered decadent, both Dall`ek and Jaakh had gotten provoked and angry if they had found one within the Clanship.

The meeting-room was pretty much in the center of the saucer-section. They past through several rooms on the way, Ursull explained their functions as they walked by. Jaakh and Derminea remained silent throughout the tour, casting short glances at each other every now and then. Jaakh did not know if the worn-out leather vest that he used every day gave him any kind of sex-appeal, but the more officially looking skirt and blouse she had found the time to slip into, certainly did. It would be nice to rip it off her and take her hard against...

"Please be seated!" Ursull said in an imperative tone of voice.

Jaakh immediately complied with her order, seating himself beside his captain. When everyone had sat down, the majority of chairs surrounding the table never the less remained empty, and since there were at least four meters of table that separated the two pairs of participants from each other, it became clear that this was an arrangement made for much bigger assemblies. It was a very nice table though, round and black, with a thin skin of crystal-glass that gave extra gloss to the varnished black surface below. The symbol of the Klingon Empire - three spikes standing out above a red circle - was carefully painted on to its center. Usually, the spikes of the symbols were black, but since the table had that color as well, the artist had granted himself some artistic freedom in order to keep it visible, painting the top spike blue, the left one green and the right one yellow. He had used very vibrant colors, it was almost as if the symbol was shining towards them.

"I want us to raid Nibulus 4 together" Ursull started, going straight to business.

Dall`ek began a long reply, but since it contained no information that was new to Jaakh, he chose to close his ears and instead focus on the intriguing details of his surroundings. Nobody could disagree that the heavy looking crystal-chandelier that hung from the ceiling was portly, or that the antique ba`haleth that hung from the wall beside him, was an excellent example of Klingon handicraft. The golden handle and rare stones embedded into it made it very beautiful. Jaakh guessed that it was several centuries old, and that it had belonged to one of the most noble warriors of the clan - who knew what great enemies of the empire it had cut through?

The wall behind Ursull was covered by a row of big oil-paintings in golden frames. All of these were portraits of Daak Clan-leaders, going several centuries back. Their current leader - Gow Daak - was the only one of them Jaakh could recognize. She held a seat in the High Council, and was therefore a well-known face throughout the empire. When comparing her appearance to Ursull's, Jaakh could actually find some common traits between them. They both had the same kind of sharpness to their eyes, and the same pointy nose. Gow was much older though, at the portrait her hair was all gray, not salt-and-pepper like Ursull's - and that painting was probably a decade old.

"I see you take a liking to my meeting-room?" Ursull asked in a questioning tone.

While conversing Dall`ek, she had noticed Jaakh's wandering gaze - how he had examined all the objects in the room with keen interest.

"I understand that this is where you bring your friends?" Jaakh asked back.

She kept some very valuable stuff here, he found it odd that she did not store it some place more private.

"Indeed, I have another meeting-room closer to the transporter that I use for more aggressive negotiations."

"I am honored to be here" He replied quite honestly, while bowing his head towards the table in a gesture of humility.

"So" Ursull said resolutely, returning her attention to Dall`ek.

"We raided a Ferengi trading-ship on our way here, dismantling everything of value before we threw away the carcass"

"You did? We hunted one as well, we gave it a good scare, but then our warp-engine failed on us"

Dall`ek answered.

Jaakh was surprised that his captain chose to be so honest about their failure to complete their kill. Actually, he remembered the event quite vividly - even though it was three weeks ago. He had been the leader of the away-team back then, and he had returned to the bridge after waiting in the transporter-room for a boarding that never happened. When they in the corridor, Dall`ek had said something about breakfast, and Jaakh had answered that "You sound awfully happy for a man who just lost a pursuit". Dall`ek had then smoothed over the defeat by saying: "It doesn't matter, we gave them a good scare"

"Good that we were in the neighborhood then" Ursull said.

Her lips curved into a broad, predatory smile that exposed her sharp and sexy looking fangs. - She was clearly enjoying the moment. It had been a large catch too, the Ferengi ship had been of their biggest class.

"My reason for bringing this up, is the plasma-weapon. I can upgrade that rudimentary plasma-cannon of yours with something that improves its range and also helps it penetrate atmospheres more easily." She added.

"You can? That would be swell!" Dall`ek screamed joyfully, suddenly filled with eager enthusiasm.

"So here is my proposal: I fix you up with the Ferengi equipment, you join my raid, and I get first spoils until my storage-bay is filled. Is that okay with you?"

Since further improvements to the plasma-cannon might save him a humiliating trip to one of the public repair-stations, Dall`ek needed no time to think about her offer. These stations replaced damaged weaponry and overhauled ships in need free of charge - as long as they were members of the Klingon Defense League. It was never the less considered shameful to use such stations, a Klingon captain should be able to pull his own weight.

"Definitely, with new weaponry we can go raid some other place later"

Another good thing that would come from this was that Dall`ek might get some goodwill within the High Council. Ursull would remember their time together as fun and productive, and when she talked about it to her Clan-leader, the word might spread within the Council. "Dall`ek had some trouble in that Nibulus system" they would say "But it certainly turned out good in the end".

Jaakh on the other hand, did not think about this positive side-effect, and without it the deal was a lot more questionable. Nibulus 4 was a wealthy and heavily populated planet, and Ursull's cargo-bay was huge. From all they knew, they might be able to fill it with pure industrial carbon, or high-quality duranium alloys, sucking the planet of all the good stuff and leave the cheap left-overs for Dall`ek, who now ran the risk of being stuck with nothing but envy.

"This weapons-upgrade you offer us, what is it?" Jaakh asked, trying to hide his skepticism behind a blanket of curiosity.

This triggered a long and detailed explanation from Ursull:

"Nitruxium encapsulation. I have no idea why the storaga-bay of the Ferengi ship had so much of it, but we use it because it stays together under all but the most extreme temperatures, and because it reacts to electromagnetism the same way hydrogen plasma do. It should be quite easy to reconfigure that mag-bullets system you stole from the natives, and turn it into an encapsulation-device that will protect the plasma from heat-loss and atmospheric friction until it reaches its target"

"Sounds good, can you add a couple of photon torpedoes on top of that? It would be good to have something extra if our power-source fails" Jaakh bargained.

He felt that he was stepping over his boundaries here, that he might be provoking a hostile snarl from either Ursull or Dall`ek - a clear cue that he should get back into place. The reply however, turned out to be both pleasant and positive:

"Absolutely, out here in the borderlands, we Klingons have to be generous with each other, don't you agree?"


	19. Chapter 19: Diplomacy

Yumaar had a personal plane, and now Jonas and Carolyn were sitting in it, together with Yumaar himself, and - off course - the pilot. The king had a different plane, which was good - Jonas found it cramped enough without his corpulent majesty taking up even more of what little space they had. Like everything else K`hmynian, it was made for K`hmynians - not huge Humans.

The two crew-members of the Hidden Explorer had strapped themselves well down in their seats. Without tight restrains keeping them down, even the most gentle of turbulence would cause them to bump their heads into the low ceiling. The windows were small too, made for K`hmynian heads as they were. In order to peak through one had to close one eye and then squeeze the other one as close to the glass as it could get. Since the plane was flying below the cloud-layer, the reward for doing this was some very interesting scenery. Below them, huge forests of brown giant-mushrooms passed by, separated by fields of bluish grass. It looked a lot more blue from this height than it had done when standing among it, the result was a scenery of very vivid, alien colors. If one was able to ignore those colors, the somewhat flat and cultivated landscape had many similarities to the British country-side. There where huge clusters of farms scattered among the forests and grass, each one with a small town-center in the middle.

They had only been in the air for half an hour or so. The plane held a low speed of no more than a thousand kilometers an hour, it would take several hours to reach their destination at this slack pace. Citizens of twenty-fourth century Earth was not used to wait this long in transit, not on the surface of planets anyway. Had Carolyn not ordered Zin and Jeff to disassemble the Hidden Explorer, they could have used the teleporter on board, and had she not ordered them to remove the shield-generator and fusion-plant as well, they could have used the ship itself. Jeff had made them an elegant combat-plan, but the downside was that their means of transportation has to be sacrificed.

Progress had been made already, Yumaar had helped him find warheads of the right size, and the teleporter was currently being set up within the protective walls of a military bunker that was located beneath a kilometer of protective rock. For extra support, the deflector-shields would be refitted so that they formed a protective barrier that followed the interior walls of the bunker, that way reinforcing its structural integrity. Despite these preparations, the bunker was doomed to crumble under the massive firepower unleashed by the Klingon counterstrike, they could only hope that they got enough time to beam all the warheads up before it happened. If not completely obliterated by the detonations, the Klingons would at least be greatly weakened. Would the puny phaser-banks of the Hidden Explorer be strong enough to finish the job? It certainly would be dangerous, unacceptably dangerous some might say.

Jonas didn't like it, so his brain had been working hard to figure out a better way to finish the job. So far he had been unsuccessful, but now a light-bulb lit up inside his head - an idea that just might be worth airing to his captain. Carolyn was sitting at the other side of the narrow path that went between the two rows of seats. He turned towards her to speak.

"Hey Carolyn?"

"Yeah?" She turned away from the small window she had been looking out through, giving him her full attention.

"What if we remove the phaser-cannons from the ship and hide them inside a satellite or something? We can open fire without putting our selves in harms way" Jonas theorized.

"The fusion-plant is needed with the shields, so it wont have any energy. We might need the warp-core to get home, and the Klingons will find the phasers even before they enter orbit anyway, their scanners are all geared towards it" She explained.

"So what do we do if the nukes fail to take out the Klingons?" He asked for the second time that day, they had had this discussion before.

"If the nukes fail, and the K`hmynians don't have a plan-b, we must climb into orbit and take them out our selves" She said, repeating the old plan.

"Getting our selves killed in the process?" Jonas asked,

"Only you I'm afraid"

He was thrown a bit out of balance by the unexpected reply. At this point, the current discussion deviated from the old one.

"What?" He screamed, baffled.

"You are our pilot after all, and as long as we are not traveling at warp, Zin is not needed in engineering"

Jonas hated to admit it, but her reasoning was logically sound.

"Shit!"

Jonas could not help cursing, he found no other way to express the wave of anger that flared up inside his head. Then he threw himself back into the uncomfortable and hard seat, looking into the low ceiling. If he stretched upwards, he could almost touch it with the tip of his nose.

"And I wont even have a proper shield! It will all be down in that cave together with the teleporter!" He protested loudly, frustrated by the lousy plan.

"Hm, quite true, I didn't think about that. Do you think we can adjust the navigational deflector somehow?"

Jonas was provoked further by the somewhat intellectual tone of her voice, it was as if she thought of it as a funny puzzle that they had to peace together - not at all a question of life and death. For a moment he felt like shouting profanities at her, but he did not. Instead he folded his arms over his chest while gazing angrily out of the window. The landscape beneath was still wrongly-colored British. Watching it as it passed slowly by, he begun counting from ten and downwards. By the time he arrived at four, he felt calm enough to form a more constructive reply:

"Perhaps. If I recall correctly, both systems are graviton-based. Quite frankly I don't know why the forward reflector fails to stop beam-weapons and disruptors, while the main shield does"

"I think I will call Jeff and ask" Carolyn said.

"Please do"

The air around them was thick with noise from the engines, so Carolyn rose from her seat and started walking further back in the cabin. There was a small lounge there with two very deep chairs in dark leather, a minibar, some old-school newspapers that were made from actual paper - all of them filled with strange K`hmynian letters - and a flat-screen with internet uplink. None of this was needed to call Jeff, only the communicator she carried with her, and the relative tranquility that came with being further away from the engines.

Prince Yumaar had been sitting there since take-off, alone with his thoughts and a glass of a brown, whiskey-like liquor. Just as Carolyn was about to enter, he came walking out the door

"All good?" He asked.

"I'm fine, thank you, I really enjoy the view over your beautiful country. Can I borrow the lounge, I need to make a call?" Carolyn asked politely.

"No problem"

The trivial conversation ended as they eeled past each other. Had Carolyn been a K`hmynian rather than a Human, it would most probably have been enough space for both, but no. Yumaar's head was squeezed into her soft belly as he tried to pass by, the antennas on top of his head scratched her breasts. Jonas - who had turned around in his seat in order to observe the incident - wondered if this turned him on. For Yumaar, that was a whole lot of woman. The involuntarily intimate situation ended when they managed to squeeze past each other. Yumaar headed towards the seats up front while Carolyn closed the dark-wooden door of the lounge behind her.

When Yumaar crashed down into the seat that Carolyn had warmed up for him, he had news that he wanted to share:

"Dad wants to marry me away to this idiotic witch that he have found"

judging from the sound of his voice, he was very worked up over it. Jonas got the impression that he had just walked away from a major quarrel.

"Really, why is that?" He asked, while looking at the prince with keen interest.

"She is the heir to most of the companies and realestates of the Zipowe-family, high nobility. Dad says that it's a matter of securing the future of the monarchy"

"I have never had that problem, is she good looking?" Jonas wondered, somewhat amused by the dilemma.

"Hardly. The Zipowes are as ugly as they are powerful, and Amblenia is no exception I'm afraid"

Yumaar complained, full of frustration.

"You should try to avoid it then. The future king deserves a beautiful wife, don't you think?"

"Agreed, but what should I do? Securing the monarchy is pretty damn important if you ask me!"

Yumaar was obviously at the brink of being teared apart by the conflict. Two personal interests had collided, both of equal importance. This was the stuff great dramas were made of, Shakespeare and all that. Jonas was intrigued by the exotic problem, but he also wished Yumaar a better faith than to be the protagonist of some cruel Shakespearian tragedy. Having thought these thoughts, he also arrived upon a solution of sorts:

"If you are looking for a break, you could come on an official visit to Earth, the federation would love to learn more about your planet."

His suggestion caused Yumaar's eyes to light up with hope. Jonas knew even before he opened his mouth, that Yumaar would jump on it.

"You know what, that's a brilliant idea! Earth, that's the headquarter of your empire, right? I can show you around here, and then you can show me around there. Is that okay with you?"

The words spoken were filled with contagious, optimistic energy. Seen from Jonas perspective, he might just have fixed himself a new job. With the outpost of his original assignment blown to peaces and this thing about to be concluded as well, the prospect of giving himself a new task related to the old one, was not at all bad. If they said the right things to the right people, Yumaar would be given the status of FASFE, short for "Foreign Ambassador Seeking Federation-Entry". FASFE-people usually got all the resources they needed to see everything they wanted to see within federation space, everything that was not classified that was. Since K`hmary was moving deeper and deeper into Klingon territory, it was completely unrealistic for them to actually be granted federation membership, but the bureaucrats in charge of granting FASFE-stipendiums didn't think that long ahead, they just singled out the candidates and spent the considerable resources of their yearly budgets until it ran dry.

Yumaar would get a first-class trip to Earth and its allies, learning new stuff and have great fun while at it. Chances were that the issues concerning his forced marriage would have softened up a bit by the time he got home.

"Is that okay with you?" Yumaar asked again.

Jonas had spent quite some time thinking through the scenario, FASFE-stipendium and everything. Now, Yumaar was getting annoyed with the absence of a proper reply.

"Totally fine, in fact I love the idea. But the federation would like you even better if you have some sort of democratic backing. Do you think you can get your dad and the other kings to sign a paper where they grant you the title of ambassador from your planet?" Jonas asked.

"Not a chance" Yumaar answered with prompt certainty.

"Too bad" Jonas muttered, very disappointed with the seemingly impenetrable obstacle that had arisen.

"I can fake it though" Yumaar added, still hopeful.

"Nah, it won't work in the long run. Things come out eventually, causing political problems"

"I will think of something!" Yumaar promised with great resolve.

Their conversation ebbed out, passing over to more trivial matters before stopping completely. When Jonas peaked through the small window again, the flat countryside had been replaced by dark ocean that stretched as far as he could see. Then Carolyn returned, bringing good news with her.

"I talked to Jeff" she said, leaning her elbows against the back-support of Jonas seat.

"And?"

"He can turn the navigational deflector multi-polar"

"Meaning?"

"It can replace the main shields as battlefield protection. He will have to add some K`hmynian technology to the system, but he is quite certain that it will work"

"Splendid!"

Yumaar - who had listened to their conversation - naturally wondered what was going on. Carolyn was most service-minded about satisfying his curiosity, she explained the whole thing down to its smallest, most technical details. When she was done, the white beaches of a new continent passed beneath the plane. This was the central island, the fourth landmass on the planet, and the only one of them that was not a kingdom. According to Yumaar - who had told them all about it while they had been waiting for the plane to fuel up - it was populated by wild tribes, so wild in fact, that all three kingdoms had given up on colonizing it. It was covered in thick jungles that looked much like the jungles of Earth, and it was filled with dangerous beasts, vicious tribes and deadly diseases. For the last couple of centuries it had been left mostly to itself, with one very intriguing exception: During the height of their climate-crisis, all three kingdoms had needed a neutral place to discuss how to reduce their emissions of climate-gasses and other forms of pollution.

Therefore, a bold plan had taken form. Prefabricated peaces had been flown in by huge helicopters, resulting in a tall and massive tower that was named "the tower of unity". The four legs that it rested upon was made from pure carbon-steel, a material way to strong to be torn down by the primitive natives that dwelled below the green cover of leaves. These four columns rose almost a kilometer above the ground, each one holding a slight inward angle that brought them gradually closer to each other while also becoming thinner and thinner as they stretched upwards. A snow-white, saucer-shaped structure rested upon the spot where they finally converged, and this was the historic site where the NIP, or "new industrial policy" had been hammered out, a policy that had saved the planet from becoming a toxic wasteland.

At first, the majestic saucer seemed to hover in the air, like one of those UFOs that had been so popular in Human folklore back in the twentieth and twenty-first century. It was only when they came closer, that they could see the thin girders that stretched down into the intensely green blanket below. It was not big enough to have its own runway, but Yumaar's plane was advanced enough to make a vertical landing on its roof. Due to the high altitude it would be suicide to walk out on the open roof of the saucer, the powerful winds would grab hold of them at once, pushing them over the edge. To stop the same thing from happening to the plane, it was locked in place by a set of powerful magnets upon touchdown.

As the platform that it had landed upon descended into the attic of the saucer, Jonas came to wonder how long it would take to fall down to the tropic wilderness below them. It would be a drop of one kilometer, in a gravity almost as high as on Earth. A minute maybe? Two? Three? Quite frankly he had no clue, so he asked Carolyn about it.

"Five minutes" She guessed, Jonas was pretty certain that she was overestimating.

"No more than three" He argued.

Yumaar's plane had been the last to drop into the protected atmosphere of the dark attic, three other planes stood parked beside it. Their footsteps echoed as they walked past them, the pilot lead the way towards the stairway at the other end of the hall.

"So do you want us at the meeting, or just to hang around?" Carolyn asked Yumaar.

Her voice echoed. The hard, metallic walls that surrounded them caused it to bounce around for a long time before fading out.

"The other kings need to see that you are not just some fairytale we have made up in order to bomb their colonies and orbital cannons" Yumaar replied.

His voice blended in with the the dwindling remains of Carolyn's question, and the sound of their feet against the hard surface. The acoustic chaos was left behind as they passed through the door at the bottom of the stairway. A more hotel-like environment awaited them on the other side. The ceiling and floor was made from a teak-like material, and the walls had a soft, beige color. The pilot continued ahead of the group, leading them down the somewhat claustrophobic corridor. Seen through the eyes of Yumaar and the pilot however, it was more than sufficiently lofty.

"My dad awaits us in the Northern preparation-room" Yumaar informed the others.

The layout of the structure was embedded with a strong, yet simple and straight-forward symbolism. The conference-room where the kings would meet was in the middle of the saucer, the northern preparation-room was in the northern wing, the western in the western wing, and the southern in the south. The absence of an eastern kingdom was good, since it freed up the space needed for the power-generator, kitchen and storage room. The corridor they currently walked through circled the outer rim of the saucer. On their way to the northern preparation-room, they passed the entrances to the other three sections. Neither Jonas nor Carolyn managed to get this overview. The lack of windows made it hard to orientate, so to them the structure seemed chaotic and weird, .

"Hello dad" Yumaar said as they walked into the preparation-room.

King Shyyrom was sitting in a luxurious and comfortable looking seat, Jonas got the impression that he had been lost in deep thoughts when they entered. The king was way to heavy for his height, he was almost as broad as he was tall. Getting up from the deep chair was a exhaustive struggle against gravity, a struggle that Shyyrom was barely capable of winning, and only thanks to the golden scepter that he used for support. Yumaar got angry at the sight, feeling that his dad was decaying.

"You need to loose weight, now!" He said.

"What do you suggest, liposuction?" Shyyrom asked, trying to sound ironic.

"Good idea, but you also need to change your diet. I don't know what you have been eating lately, but it certainly has to stop"

"Later son, later" The king said tiredly, not at all in the mood for an argument. Then he shifted his attention towards the Humans.

"The United Federation of Planets, is that it?" He asked, looking towards them with a curious gaze.

When they had crashed down on the yard of his countryside-mansion the day before, it had been in the worst possible moment. With the threat of nuclear war hanging over him, the king had been way too stressed out to meet the newcomers. Now on the other hand, he had all the time needed. What he saw was two huge creatures with pink skin and funny costumes. The one he identified as a female wore a blue one-peace skirt and blouse that ended well above her knees. Her long, exposed legs were enveloped by a pair of thin, black stockings. The male beside her was dressed up in a yellow sweater and black pants that were wrapped into his high leather-boots. Shyyrom could not quite decide whether it was a military or a civilian uniform, he looked like a cross-over between a soldier and a hotel-worker - quite odd indeed. Both of them had some sort of symbol sewed into the heart-side chest-region of their uniforms, it was probably the symbol of their empire.

"Precisely, we are here to back you up in case decide to pick a fight with the Klingons" The female replied while Shyyrom was digesting the impression of these strange, new allies.

"I think we do, my son tells me that you are already cooking something together for us" He answered.

"Yup, but the odds of success increase if you add some firepower of your own. We are here to give you strategic advice"

Her replies came quickly and without hesitation. It was a good thing - Shyyrom thought - that these aliens seemed so straight-forward and direct in the way they conducted their business. Perhaps this positive quality could make up for their bizarre way of dressing? Specially this thing with the way-too-short skirt annoyed him, he found it esthetically unpleasing.

"Sounds good" He said, keeping his thoughts on the skirt to himself for the time being.

"I would like to call my boss before the meeting begins, can you excuse me for a minute?" The female said.

"Off course"

Carolyn walked back out to the corridor, leaving Jonas alone with the monarch and his son. Her call to captain Kirk had been delayed over and over again, if she didn't do it now it would be a serious violation of starfleet-regulations - they could simply not engage the Klingon ship without a thumbs-up from Kirk.

The communicator beeped as the subspace signal stretched into the vast emptiness of space at a speed thousands upon thousands times as fast as the speed of light. Carolyn held her breath, waiting for someone to pick up the phone at the other end. She could not know for certain if the Enterprise was within range of the relatively weak transceiver of her hand-held communicator. For all she knew, unexpected events could have brought them to the other end of the quadrant.

"Come on, come on, come on" she whispered to her self, listening to the regular beeps of the microphone.

"Click"

"Yes!" Carolyn screamed while her red-cherry lips curved into a broad smile. It felt as if a enormous burden had been lifted of her shoulders.

"Kirk here!" Kirk said.

The sound of his voice implied that Carolyn could go back to being a happy tool for starfleet, not having to suffer the burden of complex decision-making with far-reaching consequences on her own. She felt a bit too young and inexperienced for that, fresh from the academy as she was. It was off course also nice to hear the voice of her captain again - during the short time she had known him, she had come to rather like the man.

"Hello captain, I'm so glad I could reach you. Is everything fine at the Enterprise?" Carolyn opened, speaking loud and clear to make up for possible signal-deterioration due to the eternity of nothingness that separated them. A long break followed, making it clear that the Enterprise was far, far away. Judging from the lag, Carolyn guessed somewhere between 25 and 45 light-years.

"More than fine! I beat Spock in multi-level chess again, for the third time? Can you believe it? And I thought Vulcans were supposed to be smart!" Kirk joked merrily.

It warmed her hearth to hear that her boss was in a good mood. Not only for his sake, but also because it meant the crew was safe and sound as well. Space was dangerous, to traverse it was to test ones destiny.

Carolyn giggled lightly before answering:

"You should let him win once you know, just to satisfy his Vulcan pride" She advised him.

More lag followed, she waited patiently for his answer to reach her.

"Nah, if he understands I will just have offend him further, I think we need to switch to another game"

At this point Carolyn decided that it had been enough small-talk, and that it was time to address the problem at hand:

"Up to you boss. I'm wondering about the Klingons, do you approve helping the locals of Nibulus 4 defend them selves against them?"

Lag... Lag... Lag... 1, 2, 3, 4... Sigh. Their conversation was in fact getting quite boring, filled with the monotone statics of space as it was.

"Yes, please do" Kirk finally confirmed, just as she had expected. He had not changed his mind, and nothing had changed about their situation. She could proceed as planned.

"Thank you. I think we will have a combat-situation here very soon. Can you pick us up afterwards?" She asked.

"Your second priority is to make it back into the neutral zone unseen, then you will either call me, or head directly for starbase 82. I want ensign McDonald and that Bolian to report to major Gomez at starbase 82 for replacement, and I want you and Jeff back at the Enterprise as soon as possible. Understood?"

Starbase 82 was a large spaceport that was positioned very close to the neutral zone. According to the peace-treaty, these massive constructions were considered military in nature, and therefore neither the Klingons nor the federation could not place such structures within the neutral zone itself. Only scientific outposts were allowed, and only as long as they were unarmed.

"Yes sir, see you soon"

One final break of silence followed before she could hear Kirk say:

"Kirk out", a cue for her to end the call.

Inside the preparation-room, a servant of Shyyrom came through the thick and heavy looking door that separated them from the meeting-room. He bowed gently before delivering his message:

"The other kings are taking their seats my lord"

Carolyn had returned from the corridor just in time to get the message. She closed the other door gently behind her, trying not to interrupt the King's question.

"Are they alone, or with advisers?" He asked.

"Alone sir" The servant replied.

"I should go in alone as well then. You wait here and keep our guests with company" He ordered Yumaar.

The meeting-room itself seemed sound-proof, they could not hear anything once the servant had closed the door behind him. The last thing that the outsiders could hear king Shyyrom say as he waddled through the opening was:

"Yon-Kyr, old man. How is it hanging?"

Silence followed. Yumaar looked from Jonas to Carolyn, and then back to Jonas.

"So..." He said, adding an artificially long pause before completing the sentence:

"My dad will probably want to show you off to the other kings in a couple of minutes, they will just have to go through the ritual greetings first"

"Food or drink?" The somewhat nervous servant shot in when Yumaar had finished speaking.

"A glass of water would be nice" Jonas requested.

"What do you think the kings are talking about in there?" Carolyn asked Yumaar, ignoring the servant's question.

"If things take time, it is probably because the other two have environmental concerns to stress my dad with. In order to stimulate the economy, we have softened up the regulations a bit. The other kingdoms sees it as a violation of the old treaty, and this is after all the correct place for such discussions"

"Hm"

Interesting as it was, neither Jonas nor Carolyn had any wisdom or opinions to share at this matter. The small group went silent, Carolyn and Jonas sat down next to Yumaar - and waited. It felt a bit like they were waiting to be called into the the principals office. Jonas expected them to be pumped full of questions, but who should answer?

"Can you take care of the talking?" He asked Carolyn carefully, almost whispering.

"Agreed" She answered short and resolutely.

Jonas was given his glass of water, more waiting followed. He took a few sips, looked around the walls and ceilings. It was odd - he thought - that such an important and historic place was so scarcely decorated. There were no paintings on the walls, no chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

Then the heavy door opened slowly, the head of another servant peaked through the gap, telling them that "their presence was requested".

"Here we go!"

Carolyn said, rising abruptly from her chair. Before walking through she straightened out her uniform and fixed the ball-like arrangement that she had gathered her blond hair into. Jonas followed her example on the uniform, even though he really didn't feel the necessity to do so. He found it to be sufficiently straight and clean, despite having been worn for a while - Starfleet clothing was made for heavy use. Since the door was so thick and massive, the servant struggled to push it open enough for them to walk through the gap. Carolyn gave the little creature a helping hand, and then they were inside, suddenly chairing space with the three most powerful beings on the planet. As he looked from face to face, it became clear to Jonas that they represented three very different K`hmynian cultures with distinct traditions on things like esthetic's and handicrafts.

The thinnest, youngest and most slender of the kings wore a minimalistic single-colored tunic in bright red, accompanied with what appeared to be a odd - silly some might say - looking aluminum-hat that formed spike-like peaks around his antennas and bulbed outwards around the ears. King Shyyrom looked more like a medieval European king, with his golden scepter, heavy jewelry, silk-like cape and corpulent body-shape. The third king was wrapped into a big toga that had a dense and complex pattern sown into it. He was more like an old and experienced Roman emperor - his silvery-gray hair was short and started very high up on the long and flat wall that was his forehead. This was a king that looked far more dignified and intelligent than the other two. The pointy and outstanding mickey-mouse hat of the second king ruined the aura of seriousness that he tried to uphold by putting on a facial expression of neutral, serious grumpiness. As for Shyyrom, he was just way to fat both for K`hmynian and Federation standards. - If his son's judgment was representative, that was.

"This is Carolyn and Jonas, two _Humuns_ who represent the United Federation of Planets" Shyyrom said, introducing them to the other two kings.

"Humans" Carolyn immediately corrected him, putting pressure on the A.

"King Shyyrom have told us about the business you say you have here" The Roman emperor said, a hint of skepticism in his voice.

"I would be delighted to answer any further questions you might have" Carolyn replied, trying to sound as service-minded and pleasant as possible.

"First these slick Ferengi-traders sponsored the northern and western kingdoms with technology that is far beyond our capabilities, putting us southerners at disadvantage"

The roman emperor leaned forward in his chair, scrutinizing Carolyn with a intense gaze.

"And now these Klingons come to plunder..."

"Relations with other species is never..." Carolyn was going to say, "simple", but she was abrupt by the hard, somewhat rusty voice of the old Roman.

"So how are YOU planning to make our lives miserable?" He howled loud and angrily, now pointing at her with a blue finger that shivered from either rage, or old age - perhaps both.

When looking towards her, Jonas was pleased to see that Carolyn did not allow his aggressive stance to push her out of balance. Her eyes did not flicker from his gaze, and her voice was still clear, firm and neutral when she replied.

"After helping you against the attack, we might be able to share some technology with you our selves, but unlike the Ferengi, we do not want to change the balance of power between you. What we give is for everyone."

"Well done" Jonas thought, an unspoken compliment to the way Carolyn handled the situation. He felt that they had succeeded well in representing the federation - so far.

"So why did you come to king Shyyrom first!" He threw at her, as fast and energetic as a lightening.

"We found a K`hmynian expedition at planet number six. They did not have enough fuel to get home on their own, so we gave them a lift. It was the expedition-leader that introduced us to king Shyyrom"

She was still calm, still ordered and structured in her explanations.

"How do we know you did not make a deal with the Northerners, that you will destroy us and give them the planet in exchange for a piece of our natural resources?" The still paranoid king accused her.

"Well, if you want us to we will try to get a Klingon body for you, prove that we are not them"

"Humpf!"

The king made a angry sound that was either a word not present in the dictionary of the translator, or alternatively it was just a hostile growl. He leaned back in his chair, signaling to the others that his part of the examination was put on hold. King Shyyrom chose wisely in keeping his mouth shut, as he was the one suspected of alien-collaboration.

"I think we must judge these aliens from their actions" The king with the silly hat opined.

He was less angry, and less frightening than the Roman emperor - he didn't have the same air of authority around him.

"We can help you against the Klingons, if you want us to - that should be the first issue to figure out" Carolyn answered.

"What happens if we don't?" Silly-hat asked her.

"The Klingons will send away-teams to mark things of value, and then they will beam them up until their cargo-bay is filled. Since they didn't meet any resistance, the rumor will spread, and then more Klingons will follow"

"And if we resist?" He inquired.

"Some casualties, maybe none if our plan works"

At this point Jonas was burning in with a peace of information that he felt was too important to keep to himself, even though Carolyn had said she would do the talking - and had done a mighty fine job at it so far, one might add.

"The Klingons will destroy your military bases anyway, as they see them as a threat to their away-teams. - There will most definitely be casualties" He said.

This was most probably a part of starfleet curriculum, but Jonas remembered it from an old civilian documentary he had seen at the web.

"I vote for resistance and starfleet aid!" King Shyyrom loudly proclaimed, rising his right arm into the air.

"Seems like a good idea, doesn't it?" Silly-hat asked the roman emperor.

All silly-hat got in return was another angry growl. It was clear that the he had chosen to play the part of skeptical brake. Unfortunately, he seemed to have temporarily ran out of aggressive questions to ask them.

"If you like we can take a short pause to regroup" Carolyn kindly proposed, sensing that the negotiations were about to stall.

"Definitely!"

After speaking, the angry king rose abruptly from his chair. Then he marched out with long, quick strides meant to accentuate his bad temper before the others. Silly-hat rose next.

"See you soon" He mumbled to Shyyrom as he tip-toed towards the western preparation-room. A servant opened the door for him from the other side. When it close shut, Shyyrom, Carolyn and Jonas were alone in the meeting-room.

"So what do you think?" Jonas asked the king.

"Nothing specific really" King Shyyrom muttered while shrugging his shoulders casually.

The break was followed by a complex and tedious set of negotiations. The tricky thing was that none of the kings were ready to share their military secrets with each others, so when Carolyn tried to haul out of them the information necessary to form a common plan, all three were equally reluctant to give any useful answers in each others presence. King silly-hat proposed nuking them out with ballistic missiles, and Carolyn explained that any unshielded weapon that relied on being physically pushed out of the atmosphere would be useless. Without proper shielding and engines good enough for impulse-style acceleration, they would all be shot down long before they got the chance to do any damage. Did any of the kingdoms possess energy shields, or engines capable of a accelerating at a hundred Gs or more through their atmosphere? No answers were given, and when Shyyrom proposed it, the other two rejected the idea of donating warheads to Jeff's teleporter-setup. The best alternative then, would be a set of powerful ground-based lasers, or preferably a more efficient type of beam-weapon. Did they have any such installations? The answer to this question as well, was shielded behind the impenetrable haze of high-level secrecy and general paranoia. The unwilling kings continued their wall of silence.

"This is not getting us anywhere!" Carolyn snarled in frustration.

"And if we had such a weapon..." The roman emperor said slowly, breaking a long period of silence at his part. For all this time he had been rubbing his cheek in a thoughtful manner, scheming and plotting.

"If you had such a weapon?" Carolyn repeated hopefully.

"Could you then give us a more detailed description of the nature of our targets. Hull-strength, distance, probable speed, such things?"

"Definitely!" She eagerly agreed."But if its a laser, you will have to remove the cloud-layer above it to get a clear shot into space. Do you know how to do that?"

"I'm not saying we have one, but I don't really see the necessity of grouping together like a big happy family. If you give us what you have on the enemy, we can each take our own paths, don't you agree?"

"The man has a point" Shyyrom said, looking towards him with sleepy eyes.

During the last couple of minutes he had sunken down into his chair, the tiresome debate seemed to be draining what little energy he had out of him.

"I have, don't I!"

The roman emperor said it in a "you-people-are-slow-and-dumb" kind of way. The way he saw it, they could have reached this conclusion a long time ago - had the other two been more like him.

"Where are you staying by the way?" King silly-hat suddenly wanted to know.

"We are still in our ship, its parked at king Shyyrom's mansion when not here" Carolyn replied, forgetting perhaps, that Jeff and Zin was busy taking it apart down in that bomb-shelter with the nukes.

"If all this turns out well, you will have to pay a visit to us westerners as well. I will personally show you around" He invited her, sounding genuinely friendly.

"We would be delighted to, or at least some of us will. My boss wants me elsewhere" Carolyn answered, hoping that her rejection did not sound too rude to his aluminum-covered ears.

Thinking ahead, Jonas was naturally wondering if this implied that he and the others would be left behind with an ambassador-function after Carolyn left. It sounded comfy enough as long as they could smuggle a proper food-replicator inn. Even though he had a good impression of K`hmynian food so far, it would be exhausting to rely on alien food only. - All new and exotic, nothing old and familiar.

Meanwhile, the roman emperor had something on his hearth:

"That goes for us southerners as well off course, but first we need to resolve this issue. If we disable the Klingon invader in orbit, can you bring it down for us?"

His aggression had lifted a bit, it seemed. Now he was back in his usual mood of general skepticism.

"Good idea actually, we can help bring the remains to the surface and let your researchers have a look at it. You can consider it a gift from the federation" Carolyn offered generously .

"IF we win" Jonas shot in, correcting her.

"If we win, you all get to share it." Carolyn promised.

"And if we don't?" Silly-hat asked, sounding quite anxious.

"The booby-price is a nice collection of vegetables from Earth, we have far to many of them" Carolyn joked, a fresh little smile on her cute face.

"Sounds fair to me" King Shyyrom said, lifting his hand in a nonchalant gesture of approval.

"You mail us the data then, King Shyyrom have the contact info" The roman emperor said.

"Will do" Carolyn agreed, relieved to see that the meeting was about to wrap itself up nicely.

She was looking forward to retreat back into their safe little nest on Yumaar's plane.

"To war then!" The roman emperor screamed dramatically while rising from his chair.

"To war" the other two tallied in.

Three blue hands clasped together over the meeting-table.


	20. Chapter 20: Dark clouds in the horizon

The clouds were lighting up above the royal castle of Thronar, the capital city of the Northern Kingdom. Yumaar was alone in his personal section of the castle, twenty-six huge rooms interconnected by broad hallways. Now that the sun was rising, it lit up the cloud-layer, making it look as if it was the clouds them selves that illuminated the planet surface. The light had awoken Yumaar from his slumber, so he got up and walked across the big room, making a full stop in front of the big mirror. His sleepy eyes scrutinized them selves for a moment, then he stretched his arms towards the ceiling, stretching out his back and shoulders as well. This was his third morning since touch-down at K`hmary, first one back at the royal castle. Yumaar had not yet found time to mourn the passing of his furry old friend Quinx, so his plan for the day was first to fetch Kesh, and then they would go and pay their last tributes to his grave together.

Upon arriving in his personal dining-hall, Yumaar rang the bell that was placed on the table, summoning Kesh and the meal that she had prepared for him. Two boiled eggs from the Curamino-bird, and a generously sized wad of spiced up Dashy-gulash. These meals were so expensive that the rest of the nobility only could afford to eat them on big days like weddings, the feast of Humux, and funerals. Yumaar on the other hand, ate this for breakfast every day of the week. The only exception so far had been his days as the captain of the Yumaar explorer. The nobles in his crew would only have gotten envious if he ate it in their presence, and it would have busted their already massive budgets if everyone should do it.

"How was breakfast?" Kesh asked on routine when she came back to collect the empty plate.

"Good as always" He reassured her.

"Are we still going to Quinx grave?" She asked.

"Absolutely. Do you have the flowers?"

"Yes"

"Good, meet me outside in five minutes"

There was something else that Yumaar wanted to talk with Kesh about that morning, a proposal that he hoped she would agree with. He was planning to ask her about it while on their way to the grave. Quinx was buried out in the royal gardens, a suiting spot because this was where he had spent most of his life. Here he had hunted small-game, fetched balls and sticks that Yumaar had thrown to him, and... Well, mostly those two.

The royal garden consisted of a huge, well-trimmed lawn of bluish grass, with rows of rare and beautiful Turrati mega-mushrooms that stood up on both sides of the broad path leading away from the castle. Behind the deep-blue lines of Turrati, a half-wild forest of the more the ordinary type began. Like most forests in the kingdom, it was dominated by the huge Cuwubian mushrooms. The keeper thinned it out every now and then to make it easy to walk through, but that was all - a good hunting ground could not be too tame. Yumaar personally had always preferred the gardens. He liked the combination of the open landscape, the lively colors of the grass and and more nimble Turrati-mushrooms, and the joyful sound of birds twittering. Hopefully, the pleasant surroundings would increase his chances of getting a positive reply from Kesh, who was walking by his side.

"There is something I want to ask you about" He said carefully.

For the last couple of minutes, both Kesh and Yumaar had walked silently through the big lawn, working hard to suck in all the fresh air, the smell of blooming plantlife, and the big, open landscape. After having spent more than a month trapped within the narrow confinement of a space-ship, this was a almost divine experience.

"I'm listening" Kesh replied in a relaxed, friendly tone.

Her smooth, feminine voice invited him to go on. Anxious about her response to the proposal he was going to make, a long break of hesitation followed before Yumaar spoke again:

"I am thinking about going out on another journey, this one might be a bit longer than the old one, and I want you at my side"

"So soon? No time to rest on your laurels?" She asked, turning towards him with a surprised look on her face.

She was no longer sucking in the atmosphere of the garden, now he had her full attention.

"I am considering to explore the empire of the Humans, they have offered me a tour" Yumaar explained.

Kesh drew her breath, thinking for a second before answering.

"That would be something, wouldn't it? But you realize that you jeopardize your right to the throne? If your are absent when your dad dies, a substitute must be installed in your place"

Those were wise words indeed. Surprisingly so - one might say - considering that they were coming from the mouth of a servant. Perhaps with the proper education, she could become his adviser as well?

"True, I didn't expect you to think that far ahead. Why do you think dad is about to die?" He asked her while thinking this thought.

"Primarily because he is swelling up like a balloon, and secondly because he brought you along for the meeting at the tower of unity. All the other kings went alone"

Kesh was quite logical in her reasoning. Yumaar didn't want it to be this way, but chances were that she had put the pieces correctly together... Sigh, the whole thing was starting to wear Yumaar down.

"Have you ever seen Amblenia Zipowe?" He asked her, shifting from one problem to another.

"The heir to the Zipowe realestate-empire? Uhu, I think I get the picture" Kesh said.

"Tell me the picture then" He challenged her.

"You need to get away so that you don't have to marry the Zipowe-troll" Kesh answered, as precise and correct as it was possible to be.

"The Zipowe-troll, is that what they call her, eh?" Yumaar wondered.

"You obviously don't read the colored press, do you?"

He didn't, and he was not about to begin either. Even though it was so depressing that it sucked the will to live out of him, it was also kind of funny - in a twisted, rotten kind of way. His dad wanted him to marry a thing that the tabloids had nicknamed "The Zipowe-troll"! What kind of lousy idea was that? Those people had to be even richer than he could imagine!

"Pause!" Yumaar screamed.

His inner batteries were all flat, and he refused to walk any longer before his mood improved. The prince fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes, he did not even bother to change the uncomfortable, slightly humiliating position he ended up lying in. When down there, he sucked in the sweetish scent of the blue grass, taking comfort in that.

"Haha! You drama-queen!" Kesh teased him.

Then she sat down beside him in a calmer and less dramatic way.

"Trusted dagger, though that are my sole friend and noble rescuer!" Yumaar proclaimed while pretending to hold a dagger whose sharp end was pointing towards his chest.

He was reciting a famous play by Gum-Daian Knoxx, a classic playwright from some long-passed century. One could argue that he was the K`hmynian equivalent to Shakespeare.

"Your cold steel shall keep me company in my shallow grave!"

"Thi-hi-hi!"

Judging from the sound of it, Kesh was having great fun. Yumaar had always liked to hear her laugh.

"If the alternative to hanging with the Humans is bad poetry, cold steel and shallow graves, I would off course prefer to hang with the Humans" Kesh said when she had managed to suppress the laughter.

"Even if it involves faking a document?"

Silence. Kesh could not make up an opinion about this because she was unfamiliar with the issue.

"Do as you want. I'll be happy to tag along if you go" She finally said.

* * *

><p>Dall`ek hated the Ferengi. Even their physical manifestation seemed to be a negation of every value that Klingons strove towards. To Dall`ek, the low stature of the Ferengi was a sign not only of physical weakness, but also of their low moral standards. They did not have robust, long and sharp teeth like Klingons. Instead they had stub needles that while sharp, never grew more than a centimeter out of their thick gums. The disordered pattern of these lousy excuse for teeth made their jaws comparable to that of more lowly predators such as the Va-Que, a carnivore fish that lived in some ponds at the Klingon homeworld. Such comparisons were actually quite suiting, at least to Dall`ek, who considered the Ferengi a lifeform way below the Klingons, perhaps not even an intelligent one.<p>

This did not make Dall`ek a racist deviant among his own kind. In fact, his attitudes were quite commonplace among the Klingons, who scorned every single one of the intelligent species they had ran across while expanding their empire. They hated the Humans for being soft and weak, their sheep-like smiles and stupid preference for dialog over violence - the way of the cowards, as the Klingons saw it. The Vulcans were hated for their preference for logic and self-restrains over emotions, the Klingons resented the way they constructed artificial boundaries against their true nature. The Romulans where as much envied as they were hated for their superior firepower and technology, assets that caused the Klingon fleet severe losses. The Ferengi where scorned for the way they looked, and for their philosophy. It was something about profit, trade, and a dark god they worshiped that they called "the free market". Dall`ek didn't know a lot about it, but what little he knew, he found absolutely repulsive. Such nasty little creatures should not be permitted to roam Klingon space freely, so it was very good that Ursull had managed to capture and lock them up. The Ferengi-ship had been a big one. It had carried with it several hundred inhabitants, and lots and lots of cargo. In addition, plenty of valuable materials and parts had been extracted from its hull. The Daak clanship had devoured it greedily, leaving only a stripped carcass behind out in the neutral zone. - And there were still enough free space left to suck the lifeblood out of Nibulus 4.

The prison-cells of the Daak Clanship were all stacked on top of each other, forming a wall that was both high and wide. The way this wall curved around the entrance and the surveillance-station in front of it made it very space-efficient while making it easy for the guard to have a clear line of sight into each and every one of the cells. The line of sight was not hindered by locked doors, the prisoners were confined to their individual quarters by invisible energy-barriers that would give them severe shocks if they tried to climb down from the shelves they were restricted to. A lift that could travel in both vertical and horizontal lines stood parked where the wall of cells met the floor. If one of the prisoners was needed for questioning or medical attention, it could be used to transport him all the way into the interrogation-room next-door.

"So what do you plan to do with them?" Dall`ek asked Ursull, who was in the room with him.

She had brought him here, eager to show off the prisoners. The Ferengi-ship had given them heavy resistance she claimed, and because of it, she took pride in her victory. Now they were just a collection of caged animals who passively awaiting whatever cruel fate she had in store for them. Some of the foul creatures looked towards her with burning hatred in their eyes, one of them threw a repressed little snarl in their general direction.

"I don't know. Are there still slave-markets within the Orion Syndicate? I have little experience in this business" Ursull answered, uncertain.

Some Klingon captains actually specialized in capturing slaves. Ursull it turned out, was not among them. This was good, because slaverunners had a reputation for being unpleasant and dishonorable. Dall`ek's own experience with slaverunners only served to enforce this stereotype, and he had in fact never himself handled slaves of his own. His ship did in fact not have the facilities needed to carry more than a few of them anyway, so it was not as if he had been missing out on huge profit.

"If not, they are always needed in the dilithium mines at Rura Penthe." He replied.

"Nah, government facility, lousy prices"

Ursull turned around when she had finished speaking, Dall`ek followed closely behind her. They were heading for the door.

"Well, the Orion Syndicate is not far away" He suggested.

The Orion Syndicate had turned slave-trade into their specialty. They had set up huge trading-posts on strategic points along their boarders, and since slaves were illegal within both the Romulan and Human empires, buyers and sellers from both superpowers clustered to these stations.

"I have to pass through some rather unpleasant space to get there though, do you think it's worth the risk?" She asked him.

The thick door automatically opened as they stepped towards it.

"Nothing your Clanship can't handle, you are the biggest bully in the sandbox" Dall`ek encouraged her. She froze a few steps into the broad hallway, spending a few seconds considering his words.

"The problem with these lousy Ferengi is that they lack both sex-appeal and strength. What else do buyers look for in a slave?" She complained.

The prison-entrance made a dampened swoosh-like sound as it closed behind them.

"Rura Penthe it is then" Dall`ek concluded for her.

Dall`ek envied Ursull for the majestic grandeur of her bridge. With increased size followed more complex systems, so it held almost three times as many work-stations beneath its lofty dome. During its long history of space exploration and warfare, the Klingon Empire had learned that it was better to have a bit too many bridge-officers, than it was to have too few. Rather than a single weapons-operator - as the norm was for smaller ships such as Dall`ek's Raptor-class vessel - the Daak Clanship had one for each of its four four disruptor-cannons, one for the two torpedo-bays, and one for the mysterious "concussive charge launcher" - a weapon Dall`ek hoped to see in action. The console that was operated by science officer Sholax at his own bridge was split into three different stations here, with one officer attending each one of them. One station for scanning, one for communication, and one for analysis. The Daak clanship had separate work-station for battle-tactics and engine-regulation as well, leaving the navigator with only navigation. At Dall`ek's ship, the navigator fulfilled a whole bunch of other functions as well, making the title somewhat misleading. The production and distribution of energy had been extracted from life-support, and even some very specialized functions such as for example damage-reports, had been granted individual consoles.

Where "The fist of Kahless" had five operators - counting the captain as well - the Daak Clanship had 14. All of them were female, many of them were very, very attractive. Dall`ek's problem was that he was to old for almost all of them. Ursull was the most obvious deviation from this rule. It was frustrating though, that he had so little to impress her with. She had a bigger ship, and she came from a nobler family - the two main factors that hindered their relationship from evolving beyond the superficial friendship they currently enjoyed. Dall`ek yearned for something deeper and more profound. Not being able to get what he wanted created a painful vacuum in his chest.

Sigh...

The grand elegance of the room, the huge assortment of blinking screens and panels, watching the foxy lady-warriors at work, the buzzing liveliness of his surroundings - none of this helped elevate his mood back into its normal state. His depression was so strong that he failed to hide it properly, making Ursull take notice.,

"What's wrong?" She asked.

Dall`ek's communicator called at the same time, giving him an excellent excuse not to answer her.

"Moment" He said, eagerly pulling the vibrating object out of his pocket. .

"Dall`ek speaking" He screamed to his rescuer through the microphone.

"Science-officer Sholax speaking" Sholax answered.

"Go ahead" Dall`ek replied, a bit exhausted by the emotional turmoil he was going through.

"We are ready to test the new and improved plasma-cannon" Sholax went ahead.

"Good, I'm beaming over, stand by"

Nitrixium encapsulation... The word had a nice ring to it, but would it work in practice? Sholax had done a very impressive job when building plasma-cannon in the first place, soon they would know if he was able to repeat his success. Even though the trip over to the Clanship only had lasted a few hours, Dall`ek was in fact glad to get back. He needed to rearrange his thoughts before his next encounter with Ursull, and his head worked better within the safe and warm atmosphere of his domestic corridors.

* * *

><p>"Sir!"<p>

When Dall`ek entered his humble little bridge, all four bridge officers were present at their usual spots. They rose abruptly from their chairs at the sight of their captain, greeting him with a closed fists at the heart-side of their chest - the traditional Klingon salute.

"At ease warriors!" Dall`ek roared, happy to be among his men again.

He sat down in the captains chair, putting one leg on top of the other.

"In order to do a proper test, we should do it at a place that has some atmosphere" Sholax informed him.

"Agreed, the planet we are orbiting is one such place, is it not?"

Dall`ek felt that they had spent way to much time in orbit around that boring place. He would love to see some scorched dirt among all that frozen wasteland down there before leaving.

"That was what I was thinking" Sholax agreed.

"Great minds think alike you know. Can you take out one of the empty warehouses for me?" Dall`ek wondered.

"If you don't want collateral damage, I would go for the one Ursull plundered, its in safe distance from the settlement" Sholax proposed.

It was always good to leave some survivors, partly because they were civilians, partly because they might feel like plundering this planet again some day.

"You may proceed" Dall`ek said.

"Yes sir" Sholax affirmed, immediately activating the charger.

"Somebody put the target area on the big screen" Dall`ek requested.

"Yes sir" Naq`Da barked.

Since he had anticipated this order, his finger was resting on the button that would remove the stars and replace it with an overview of the area in question. Today was a clear day on Nibulus 5, no clouds were blocking the overview of the warehouse and the lifeless tundra that surrounded it. With no more orders to give, Dall`ek leaned back in his seat and waited for the firework to commence.

Everything turned out alright, the plasma-bubble did not burst before it hit the roof of the structure, a event that unleashed massive amounts of energy. The warehouse was obliterated in a firestorm that was as intense as it was short-lived. When it had passed, several kilometers of the surrounding tundra had been stripped of its cold grayness, evaporated and replaced by an open wound in the landscape. The scorched and tortured ground was bleeding thick white smoke from hundreds of pores, it was as if veins of vapor had been ripped open below it, now pumping its blood into the cold and dry atmosphere.

"Sholax, I love you" Dall`ek stated in a dry and flat tone of voice that only served to enhance the underlying message.

Not that he really loved Sholax off course - Klingons used that word very seldom, and only about the opposite sex - but that he had been thoroughly impressed by his supreme engineering-skills.

"Thank you sir" Sholax replied joyfully.

"All hail our glorious engineer!" The weapons-officer with the impossible name shouted. Then he jumped up from his seat while clapping feverishly.

"All hail" Kuula`Norr - the old and grizzled life-support operator - tallied in, his voice so deep and strong that it could scare a dinosaur.

The other bridge officers rapidly joined the collective praise. Sholax responded better to the positive attention this time than he had done previously, he bowed deeply before slowly sinking back into his seat.

"Silence!" Dall`ek suddenly burst out, sounding quite mad.

He was not, he just wanted to get on with the day. Also, he knew from experience that his orders were followed more quickly when they were shouted out with intense temper.

"Shields! How are they doing?"

"Excellent sir, Jaakh took a test-shot at us with the scout right before you beamed in, it didn't penetrate" Sholax was proud to report.

All that admiration from the other crew-members was finally starting to get to his head. It was getting all red and worked up, a happy grin had latched on to it. At that moment Dall`ek decided not to give him any more positive feedback for a while. A good Klingon did not blush or smile - these were feminine trait, unsuitable for a male warrior.

"Something on my screen sir"

Naq`Da had in fact been engulfed in it for quite some time, Dall`ek had noticed how his broad back had been bent over his SUBDAR-screen. He had taken a short break in order to rise up and pay his obligatory tributes to Sholax, but he had reseated and resumed his screen-gazing even before the applause ended.

"What is it now?" Dall`ek asked, a bit annoyed by the disturbance.

He wanted to plunder Nibulus 4, and he wanted to go NOW, not in a few hours, not tomorrow, not next week. Anything new would just be a nuisance, a disturbance that could delay their path to glory.

"Huge ship, moving inwards"

"Speed and distance" Dall`ek requested.

"ninety-five kilometers a second, slow acceleration of 0,2 Gs"

"They must have used quite some time to obtain this momentum then. Size?"

"Colossal, they are actually way out of SUBDAR-range, the only reason for why they popped up on my screen is because they are close to three-hundred kilometers long"

"Tah-Kech!" Dall`ek cursed.

The word had been categorized as untranslatable by the Humans who had made the Klingonese dictionary for the federation translators, but they knew that it was very vulgar. Everyone except the old and experienced Kuula`Norr looked at their captain with quizzical eyes, not understanding why he should choose to put such a foul word in his mouth.

"Huge and nasty enemies ahead" Dall`ek responded tiredly to the unspoken question.

Seemingly, the three others had never ran into the Mantesians - the only species known to make ships of this size.

"I have dealt with them before, lethal weaponry" Kuula`Norr growled in a low, somewhat restrained manner.

Dall`ek sensed a hint of fear in his voice. He himself had only theoretical knowledge of the Mantesians, so it was good to have someone on board that actually had faced them in combat.

"Do you think we can beat them?" He asked.

"It is to much for one ship to handle" Kuula`Norr warned him.

"We are two ships, one battle-cruiser I might add" Dall`ek argued.

"But not fully armed" Kuula`Norr pointed out.

"True, the Daak's are a few disruptor-banks below standard armament. What do you think?"

"Dangerous" The senior officer replied with a grave seriousness that made Dall`ek uncertain.

The bridge went silent as the captain fell into his own thoughts. He was considering the possibility that the arrival of the Mantesians was connected with Jaakh's discovery at Nibulus 3. Lots of iron and a artificial crater with a alien beacon inside, a beacon that had been activated by his tricorder... Chances were that it belonged to the Mantesians, and that they were heading inwards to investigate. If so, they would be determined to keep the planet for them selves, but so were the Klingons. Victory or defeat - that was the question.

"How long to they reach Nibulus three?" He asked his navigator.

"They are outside scanner-range, so I can not get a technical analysis of their engine or fuel-supply. The slow acceleration however, indicates of a weak and primitive propulsion-technology. My guess is that they will stabilize at a low velocity"

"The Mantesians have no warp engines" Kuula`Norr informed.

"We can go ahead with the plan then. We raid Nibulus 4, and then these other idiots will learn to respect Klingon space!"Dall`ek screamed while clutching his fist and waving it around in the air.

All this alien activity going on within Klingon boarders made his blood boil. Something drastic had to happen, and in a hurry! Would it be considered weakish to ask for reinforcements? This was not the time to air such ideas, he needed another confidential moment with Ursull.

"Hu-rah!" Kuula`Norr roared, breaking up his chain of thoughts. Dall`ek was pleased to see that he had regained his warrior-spirit.

"Hur-rah!" The others tallied in.

"Hu-rah!" Dall`ek ordered, bringing the noisy battle-cry to an abrupt end.

Sholax summoned Ursull to the main monitor. The majestic nature of the bridge, and her massive captains-seat made her look more like a queen than a captain.

"Yes?" She asked, looking at them with a strict and sharp gaze.

"We are ready to attack the enemy" Dall`ek informed.

"Weapons and shields?" She asked.

"Weapons and shields" He confirmed, nodding gently.

Ursull's right hand reached out for one of the buttons at her arm-rest, probably the button that would cut him off. Dall`ek however, had not finished.

"Plundering first then leveling?" He needed to know.

"First we plunder, then we raze their capital cities and industrial regions. We can not afford another empire to blossom at our expense, this civilization must be reversed!" She roared.

"We are in agreement, Dall`ek out"

* * *

><p>Jaakh was out with the scout when the condition of the mothership switched from stand-by mode to alert-status. The change was automatically brought up to his main screen, blinking letters compelled him to return to the shuttle-bay at once.<p>

He was not sitting in his captains seat when the message arrived, he was lying on the floor behind it. From his horizontal position he could only see the upper half of the main-screen, the rest was blocked by the back-rest of the pilot's seat.

"Looks like we are heading into battle" He mumbled, not at all feeling fit-for-fight.

He was not talking to himself, Derminea was lying there with him. Her soft body was curled around him.

"Nibulus 4?" She wondered, sweet and hot breath against his face.

"If you let me have a look I might find out" Jaakh replied.

She let go of him reluctantly. When he was free from her warm embrace, he got up to take a closer look.

"Nibulus 4" He confirmed, reading it of the screen.

"Back to work" Derminea said, sounding just as displeased as Jaakh wanted her to be.

"More glorious conquest for the empire" He answered.

"To proudly and boldly do our duty for our emperor Kahless" She proclaimed flatly.

"It is a good day to die" Jaakh added on top of it, making their conversation over-the-top correct in its patriotism.

Such militaristic slogans were quite commonplace among the Klingons, specially within the warrior-caste. They where however, very seldom recited in such rapid succession, and never in public with so little emotional weight applied. The problem was that neither Jaakh nor Derminea could switch into the proper war-mood on such short notice, not after having been involved in so completely different activities.

They both got dressed in a hurry, and when all the chain-mail and leather was back on their bodies, Derminea called up the operator at the transporter-room of the Daak Clanship. She was not supposed to be out here in Jaakh's scout, so she had to get back before anybody other than her accessory noticed that she was missing.

"Beam me home, will you?" She said to her friend.

Another sweet-sounding and feminine voice complied with her order through the communicator.

"Love you" She said tenderly to Jaakh, while the other girl locked on to her position.

"Love you too" He returned.

At that very same moment, she started to fade away.


	21. Chapter 21: Planetary siege

The Fist of Kahless was closing in on the cloudy world of Nibulus 4. Their present course and speed would bring them into a high orbit whose irregular, oblong nature would make their attack comparable to a drive-by-shooting. At first they would pass only a hundred kilometers above the surface, scratching the upper mesosphere on flyby. From this position, they would open fire upon the military surface-installations, softening enemy defenses in order to make way for the away-teams.

"Planet within scanning-range" Sholax finally said.

Dall`ek had been waiting a long time for those four words. Those damned clouds where so dense that the scanner-array had been unable to get accurate readings within its normal range. Now they were in a hurry, cause the planet had grown big on their screen, and the first flyby was only minutes away.

"Missile-silos is priority one, military airports priority two, ground-bound bases priority three. Map everything within our line of fire" Dall`ek ordered.

Sholax worked in perfect harmony with the computer-system and the scanner-array, his rapid fingers danced across the gently illuminated surface of his touch-sensitive panel, causing it to blink and beep. New instructions where continuously pumped through the interface while a fast-moving stream of newly acquired target-intel flowed from the scanner arrays to the computer-core. When safe and sound in the databanks, everything had to be categorized, analyzed and mapped so that the weapons officer with the impossible name could get a workable list of targets. And most importantly: It all had to happen fast, very fast. Fortunately, Sholax was up to the challenge. In fact he made his job look a lot easier than it really was. Dall`ek had by now become certain that he had one of the finest science officer in the fleet.

Meanwhile, the planet was getting closer. Firing-range was probably no more than a few seconds away, and...

"Within firing range sir!" Odd-name said, just as Dall`ek expected.

"What is your name soldier?" Dall`ek growled in his general direction. It caused him considerable stress to always forget the name of his weapons officer, it was about time to do something about it.

Xcarz-Rogh-Ga`hgh at your service sir!"

"Oh!..."

The collection of croaked, guttural sounds passed straight through his head, leaving absolutely no imprint in his memory. Learning it seemed an impossible task, so Dall`ek went for a simpler solution:

"From now on your name is W for Weapons, only W. Is that understood?" He said.

"As you wish captain"

"Report weapons status W" Dall`ek ordered, using his new name for the first time.

"Plasma is ready, target computer is ready" W responded.

"Then open fire!" Dall`ek roared, his voice so powerful that it made the duranium walls of the bridge vibrate. He was a very happy man now, the prospect of battle thrilled him.

"Several nuclear military missile-silos have been detected on the western continent" Sholax warned.

Dall`ek sighed, emptying his big lungs in a low growl. These obstacles blocked his path towards wonderful fireworks, and he did not like it.

"Searching for more, doing additional scans!" Sholax continued.

"So boring" Dall`ek thought while sinking into his captains-seat, no longer on the offensive.

The Klingons were not afraid of such primitive weapons as nuclear warheads, their ship was too fast and powerful for that. What they did fear however, was nuclear detonations within the atmosphere of a planet of interest. Such events put all the native lifeforms in jeopardy, and less life meant less booty. Intelligent lifeforms were a obvious target due to the products they made and the resources they gathered, but upon closer scrutiny the empire often stumbled across non-sentient lifeforms of equal usefulness. Exotic plants with healing-effects, bacterias who secreted interesting bi-products, bigger and stronger beasts of burden for primitive settlements on faraway colonies - to mention a few.

"Update list, remove all nuclear missile-silos from target-list, we want to leave this planet in good working order" Dall`ek said flatly, drawing a short breath of air before adding a second order on top of the first one:

"And bring up the tactical screen"

The tactical screen had a very simple, old-school kind of graphics. A simplified version of Nibulus 4 covered most of it. Their various targets were represented by strongly colored dots who made them stand out from the dab surface-texture. Missile-silos were red, military airports were yellow, infantry-bases were green.

"New list of targets, nuclear missile-silos removed" Sholax said while transferring the updated list to W and the main monitor. Two thirds of the red dots disappeared.

Now - finally - they were ready to fire. And fire they did. The first bolt flashed up on their screen as it pushed free from the barrel, fading rapidly away as it dived into the thick sea of clouds.

"Direct hit!" Weapons reported.

"Good! Good!" Dall`ek acclaimed.

The highly pressurized and superheated plasma had turned into colossal mushroom-shaped explosion as it hit the ground, obliterating a military installation and a nearby village with it. The clouds hindered them from seeing the destructive event with their naked eyes, but the sensors kept them informed. One red dot faded out of existence, twenty-two remained. A new bolt of plasma left the barrel, sending a gentle shiver through the hull. A third bolt was already preparing within the heating-chamber behind the barrel, it was released simultaneously with the destruction of the second silo. W kept a keen eye on his screens throughout the long and rhythmic volley, but his hands were idle. The computer had been put on the task, so there was no need for further console-tapping.

"How is power?" Dall`ek asked Kuula`Norr, the man responsible for power and life-support.

"The fusion-plant is about to overheat, so I am preparing the warp-core to take over"

"The weapon?" Dall`ek inquired.

"Heating up too rapidly, cooling-system inadequate. Further prognosis uncertain with so little experience" W reported, not looking up from his screens.

Lots of energy produced lots of heat, and this was a limiting factor for weapons and propulsion-systems alike. Overheating or not, their gear was doing a fine job at annihilating the enemy installations. The red dots were quickly obliterated, but just as they opened fire on the first yellow one, a surprising event occurred. It hit them like a lightening in the head on a clear day, causing equal shock and trauma.

Somewhere on the surface, something had been prepared for them - a lethal weapon that had eluded their sensors on its way through the atmosphere, ramming them like the fist of an invisible giant. Dall`ek was squeezed into his seat so hard that rays of agony shot through his spine. The punch continued to shove them upwards, but the inertial dampeners kicked in, reducing the G-force from crushing ten, to normal one. The invisible fist did not loose strength however, in fact it intensified, shoving them out of orbit while draining their shields.

"Evasive maneuver!" Dall`ek screamed in horror.

His trusted navigator Naq`Da had not lost his head. The ship took a sharp and sudden turn to the right, but the unknown weapon - probably some sort of beam - had no problem tracking them.

"The fusion plant is about to blow!" Kuula`Norr warned them.

Feeding the plasma-cannon had been challenging enough, and now that their shields was put to the test simultaneously, it was more than the power-plant could handle. Dall`ek held his breath while sending a silent prayer to the gods. It may have helped, for the beam stopped an eyeblink away from shield collapse. When the ship stopped shaking and squeaking, Kuula`Norr reported that the hull remained intact.

"Power-plant?" Dall`ek asked him.

"Emergency shut-down in five seconds, we will be running on reserve batteries until the warp-core is ready."

"Fire whatever plasma you have left in the barrel before it cools down" Dall`ek instructed W.

"According to my estimate I will drain the reserve-batteries completely in order to get the warp-core ready, I will have to shut of lights and gravity" Kuula`Norr informed just as W sent the last bolt out and away. He was giving a short summary of a long and complex calculation that rolled across on his screen.

"Wait until we have passed the planet" Dall`ek ordered.

"Yes sir"

"Meanwhile, I will find the source of the unknown weapon for you" Sholax said, taking the initiative to an order that was just around the corner anyway - Dall`ek liked this pro-active attitude.

The blue icon representing them on the tactical screen was now outside the brown line that it was supposed to follow, a problem that had to be fixed as soon as possible. While Sholax and Kuula`Norr sat bent over their consoles - tapping away on their consoles - Naq`Da was asked to bring the ship back into its original trajectory.

With the ship in standby-modus, and everybody busy working, tranquility and darkness filled the bridge. It was only disturbed by occasional console-beeping and flashes of bright computer-graphics that danced across the screens.

Sholax was the first officer to complete his task, "We were hit by a nadium-enforced photon-beam" he concluded.

"One step away from phase-weapons" W growled, a worried look on his broad, bearded face.

It had been quite impressive really, the way the natives not only had drained their shields to the brink of collapse, but also had thrown them out of their flight-plan. Photons alone could not have given them such a violent push - photons charged with nadions on the other hand, carried considerable mass. If their adversaries were capable of hitting them with another beam like this before their shields restored, their victory would be well deserved. Neither Dall`ek nor the others on board where keen on dying, but neither were they so afraid of death that they failed to respect a skilled enemy.

The Fist of Kahless had been temporarily paralyzed by the beam, unable to cause any further destruction upon the surface. The Daak Clanship on the other hand, had kept its focus, firing its four disruptor-cannons in a steady rhythm. The sight was encouraging, Dall`ek smiled towards the view-screen which displayed it.

Then Kuula`Norr started talking, Dall`ek turned his head towards him.

"Emergency-cool down successful, initiating warp-core start-up procedure on emergency batteries if you allow me to cut life-support and gravity in the crew-section" He said.

Thinking on it for a few seconds, Dall`ek concluded that it was a sub-optimal solution. Why not cut something else, like for example sensors, cameras and secondary back-up systems instead? Together, those three posts drained approximately the same amount of energy, and if they cut life support it would just have to work twice as hard to regain the same air-quality when they turned it back on again. He was about to turn these thoughts into orders, but Sholax directed his attention elsewhere:

"I have located the beam-weapon!" He said.

"Give coordinates to W, I want a photon torpedo on that spot, on the double!"

Both warriors worked fast and synchronized.

"Torpedo away" W reported an eyeblink later, pleasing the captain with his swiftness.

The torpedo accelerated rapidly out of the tube they had built for it inside the burnt, twisted and partially breached remains of the old torpedo-bay. Following the attack of the Enterprise, their emergency-plating had been needed to build the plasma-weapon, so they had nothing left to fill the gaping holes beneath their feet. Even though it was exposed to the vacuum of space, the torpedo-bay could still fulfill its original function.

Visual contact with the torpedo was lost when it penetrated the cloud-layer. A few seconds later, the tactical screen informed them that it had been a successful hit.

"Excellent! We won the first round!" Dall`ek said, pleased and relieved.

For the time being they were moving away from the planet, and this gave them a much needed time-out before they were pulled back in on the night-side. Dall`ek suspected that the dark half of the circle hid even more threats than what the illuminated one had, cause this was were most of the planet's land-mass was gathered. The day-side contained only the outer edges of the northern and western continent, as well as a narrow peninsula that grew into a large and roughly circular extension of the southern continent. This was were the beam-weapon had been located, the other military installations had been scattered evenly across all three continents. The wast sea between them however, covered eighty one percent of the surface on the day-side, compared to only forty-one at the night-side. Since the natives were ground-based creatures, Dall`ek assumed that they would meet heavier resistance on round two.

"Sholax, you know the drill when we re-enter scanning-range, and in the mean time I want more non-essential systems shut down so that enough energy is liberated for warp-core start-up. Just stay away from life-support"

Dall`ek noticed that his mouth was getting dry from all the orders he was shouting out. What he really wanted was a nice hot and strong cup of raktajino, but he knew well enough that it would not help against his dry throat - it was too spicy for that.

"How long is our break? Can somebody get me a mug of warnog?" He asked instead.

Warnog was a type of Klingon ale, comparable to Human beer in its alcohol-percentage. Only his navigator could answer his first question, Weapons took care of the second one.

Weapons did not go fetch it himself, instead he summoned one of the reserve-operators from the waiting-room behind them. When the wooden mug was delivered to him, Dall`ek was standing below the main screen, using the break to stretch his legs a little. The reserve who handed him the mug was robust, but slightly overweight - much like the man that had requested it. Dall`ek drank greedily, emptying half of the mug before passing it on to Kuula`Norr, who had remained seated at his regular spot. This was one of their last mugs of the good stuff, soon they would have nothing but synthale and water... Sigh, the life of a warrior could be harsh at times.

"How is the battle going?" The reserve asked with unmasked anxiety in his voice.

Dall`ek dried warnog of his wet beard before answering his question.

"The locals are though little beasts. We took quite a beating, and we are up for more"

The lesser minion nodded formally, then he turned around and walked back to his post in the waiting-room.

The background-humming that normally penetrated the ship was missing due to the nature of their situation, so the bridge was disturbingly silent. For the time being they were practically dead in the water, drifting freely through space without a workable power-source, and with several systems shut down. For the time being, Kuula`Norr was the only bridge officer not idle, he had his hands full getting the warp-core running.

Then Ursull hailed them. Dall`ek ran back to his seat before ordering Sholax to let her through. He didn't really feel like sitting down, but unfortunately the cheap com-link camera that was aimed in at the captain's chair lacked motion-track.

"Quite a rush, eh?" Ursull said as her broad smile materialized on the big screen.

"We did not expect such a powerful counterstrike" Dall`ek replied while falling casually into his seat.

Her smile was replaced with a serious, more thoughtful expression.

"They are smart too, going for the smaller ship" She uttered.

"I don't like it, I want them to attack you instead" Dall`ek was aware that this was not the right attitude for a warrior. Had it not been a joke, he would not have said it.

"Ha! I bet you would." Ursull's face lit up, she chuckled lightly, exposing her sweet little fangs.

"I for on envy you, heroics and chivalry is much easier with a ship that actually can be destroyed" She pointed out.

"Well said" Dall`ek complimented her, he had never really thought about it that way.

"Are your shields holding up?" She asked.

"Are our shields holding up?" Dall`ek passed the question on to Kuula`Norr.

"The warp-core will be up and running in four seconds, it should take no more than half a minute to rebuild them"

Ursull nodded gently, a gesture of relief.

"Everything is good with us by the way, we talk again after the second fly-by" She then said.

Dall`ek pushed the largest button on his armchair, ending the transmission.

The exterior view that replaced Ursull's image was for the time being frozen and event-less. The camera currently hooked to the main-screen was fixed on the planet, it had shrunk a bit during their conversation. The backdrop of stars that surrounded the gray semicircle on the right hand was crystal-clear and dense, much more beautiful than the planet itself. From this distance one could not see the constantly shifting texture of fine patterns and streams that were carved into the clouds, and this made them look flat and boring. The night-side was pitch-black, an ominous darkness of unknown dangers. Dall`ek's gaze was diverted away from the main-screen by a sound originating from Kuula`Norr's console. The artificial outburst was short and joyful, signaling that the computer had good news for them.

"Hmm?" Dall`ek lifted his thick, ruffled eyebrows. His dark skin rumpled above the sagittal crest of his forehead.

"Warp-core ready" Kuula`Norr reported.

"Divert maximum power to the shield-generators" Dall`ek ordered.

The ship lit up again just as the gravitational pull of the planet eliminated their forward momentum. Both the Fist of Kahless and the Daak Clanship started to fall back down, maintaining a relatively short gap of fifteen kilometers between them. Neither Dall`ek nor Ursull had recalled this rule, but the Klingon Defense Force had instructed their captains to keep a longer safety distance, specially when engaging primitive civilizations such as the one on Nibulus 4. While the more advanced civilizations had learned to concentrate their firepower in small areas, the primitive ones had a tendency towards messy and inaccurate weapons-system that scattered energy-rich matter and radiation over large areas, weakening several shield-bubbles rather than collapsing one. In such cases it was best to keep a distance of hundred kilometers at least, that way it became impossible for the enemy to target more than one ship at a time.

"I have modified the scanners, I will have longer time to map the surface this time" Sholax told them.

"Good"

"I want hull-integrity, shields and weapons to spend all the voltage it can handle. Drain everything you need from the warp-core, I don't care if it gets a little hot in there"

That last attack had proven that they were up against a serious enemy here, chances were that their small raptor-class ship was in for a another round of serious beating. To achieve victory, they needed to push it to the very brink of its limitations.

"Yes sir!" His four bridge-officers voiced in unsynchronized chorus.

Seemingly, Dall`ek had given his bridge-officers all the orders they needed for a while. The ship continued its fall inwards, and when they got close enough, target-data started to flow from Sholax's to W's console. As more and more dots appeared on the tactical screen, it became evident that there was considerable military activity going on down there, too much to be wiped out in a single rotation.

"Opening fire on the missile-siloes first" W informed.

The camera followed the first plasma-bolt as it was hurled towards the semi-circular shadow below them. The layer of nitruxium-encapsulation had altered the color of the plasma-glow, replacing the original, sharply white glow with a feverish redness. They lost visual contact with it as it plunged into the never-ending mist, and seconds later the dot that it had aimed in on vanished from the tactical screen together with the blinking frame which surrounded it.

So far so good, a new bolt of plasma was unleashed.

"How is our supply of hydrogen doing by the way?" Dall`ek asked.

He figured that such long-lasting volleys would cause their supply to dwindle, and he did not know just how many tons the storage-tank held. Since it fired distorted space rather than heated mass, the Daak Clanship did not have this problem. The steady stream of disruptor-bolts released from its four cannons were produced by nothing but empty space, and the new generation of disruptor-cannons didn't even overheat. It drained a lot of energy though, but the anti-matter that produced it was much easier to drag along than tons upon tons of liquid hydrogen.

"We have ten minutes more of continuous fire" W reported.

The decimation of the air-fields continued unhindered, soon there would only be infantry-bases left. Before the attack, Dall`ek had anticipated an attempt at launching primitive shuttles towards them from these installations, but the aliens seemed to understand that they would be shot down long before reaching their targets. Dall`ek had a bad feeling though, he tapped the palm of his left hand nervously against the arm-rest, waiting for something terrible to happen. Several bolts of plasma was released while he scrutinized the hairy knuckles of his hand.

"Something is materializing outside our..."

Naq`Da was only one word away from completing the sentence when the unknown object exploded. The twenty-one kilotons of raw energy that were released upon detonation proved a considerable challenge to their shields. A slight percentage of the explosion squeezed its way through the microscopic grid of gravitons, forming thin streams of fissioning matter that hit the hull with tremendous force. The hull-integrity field kept it from buckling, but the ship was never the less given a powerful shove that sent loose objects and crew-members flying through the rooms and corridors of the ship. For a second or so it felt as if the floor had become a vertical cliff, but then the inertial dampeners got the upper hand, stabilizing them so that up and down returned to its normal configuration.

"Bo-ra-tha!" Dall`ek screamed, using the most extremely course-word he knew, an untranslatable word that was way too rude exist in the Klingon dictionaries.

"Shields at 70%, graviton-gap at upper aft-right shield-section" Kuula`Norr informed as he pulled himself gracefully back into his chair.

He seemed calm enough, Dall`ek thought - worthy of a warrior.

"Rebuild the shields! Find source!" He shouted out.

He had not expected the enemy to have teleporting-capabilities. When combined with nuclear-warheads it became lethal, too lethal to stick around.

"Engage..."

He was going to say "Engage stealth", but he was cut short by his navigator.

"Another incoming..."

The enemy was just to damned quick for them. The second detonation occurred at the same spot, just outside their left nacelle. As the shock-wave of fissioning uranium-molecules and the vaporized remains of the container it had arrived in washed over their shields, millions upon millions of gravitons were rocked loose from the magnetic field of the ship. The section of the shield that protected the nacelle was stripped completely clean, and when it came in direct contact with the white-glowing wind created by the bomb, it exploded instantly. Upon realizing that the left nacelle was missing, the computer immediately displayed the amputated silhouette of the ship up on the big-screen, replacing the overview of the planet and their tactical screens.

"We are missing..." Naq`Da started.

"Yes, yes, I see. Engage stealth mode and change our location"

Both the thrusters and the stealth-generator was working as they should. So how did the enemy manage to track them? Dall`ek had no idea, but it was no coincidence that the third warhead materialized right in front of their flight-path. The explosion brought them back to a full-stop, everyone was thrown forward in their seats. Unfortunately Dall`ek had no console to lean against, so he was sent flying across the room. The involuntarily leap ended in a brutal crash against the hard metal-floor, the captain rolled forward, eventually slamming into the front-wall, just below the main viewscreen. When he rose to his feet again he felt like an old and beaten man. Several alarms had gone off, screaming that it was time to leave.

"Fire across deck..."

"Drop it! Take us out on impulse!"

Just as Naq`Da had plotted out a course and engaged the engines, a fourth warhead materialized a few kilometers ahead of the third one. While capable of near-light speed, the impulse-engines never the less needed millions upon millions of kilometers to achieve it. They passed close by it before it blew, but the shock-wave had no problem catching up with them, showering them in another wave of radiation, vaporized metal and degenerating uranium. The remains of their shield could not handle it, it collapsed after two seconds of exposure. What remained of the shock-wave slammed into their aft hull with its full strength. The hull-integrity field was their last line of defense, but its very best was not good enough, so by the time the wave passed it had collapsed on several spots, spots that now were bulging inwards under the extreme strain. Had their hull been made up from anything cheaper than duranium, it would probably have disintegrated completely.

"Transporter-room off-l.."

Kuula`Norr tried to report some kind of damage again, but Dall`ek was not interested.

"I don't care, continue impulse!" He screamed.

Their earlier flight-plan was not altered, they kept a steady course away from the planet - but why so slow? When the tactical screen was brought back up - replacing the depressing silhouette with the missing nacelle - the blue dot representing them was hardly moving away from the planet at all.

"Why are we not moving!" Dall`ek roared, his hoarse voice filled with frustration and despair.

"I, I don't know, something has been shook loose I guess, but it is not showing up on my screen. Running diagnostic now" His navigator stuttered.

"You better be quick about it! Engage secondary thrusters!"

"Damn!" Naq`Da had just activated diagnostic and secondary thrusters when yet another nuclear warhead materialized in their path. Without consulting his captain, he immediately plotted in the first evasive maneuver he could think off - it was called "Vorat's pirouette", and it was made for a completely different type of combat scenario. The attempt was futile, the computer had barely sent the ship into its fist pirouette when the bomb blew.

It detonated slightly below and behind the impulse-engines, and had it not been for Kuula`Norr they would all have been dead men. While Naq`Da and Dall`ek had been busy screaming at each other, he had increased the output of the warp-core beyond its limit while simultaneously releasing their emergency-reserve of gravitons into the enforced shield-bubble. It was not enough to keep the shock-wave away from the hull, but it was enough to take its edge off. The little that made it through when the shield collapsed again hit with the force comparable to a conventional bomb, and it would not have been a problem had it not struck the most vulnerable spot on the ship: the impulse-engines. They were not running when the explosion hit them, so there was nothing to keep the pressurized and super-heated gas from squeezing itself into the exit-nozzles, continuing into the plasma-coils at the deep end. The result was damaging to say the least. The impulse-engines were broken beyond repair, and still the explosion had not lost its will to expand. It continued to roll forward, pushing into the hydrogen heating-chamber where it ignited several energy-rich components. These secondary explosions blew the engines apart from within, chunks of molten debris were shot out from the duranium caskets they were built into. Radiation and scotching hot gas pumped itself through numerous microscopic ruptures in the duranium, forcing its way into the reactor-pit.

* * *

><p>The unlucky operators currently on guard-duty within the pit were knocked completely off their feet. Impulse-operator Calor found himself lying on the metal platform that was extended between the two impulse-caskets. As he rolled over on his belly to push himself back up, the master-alarm went off. This one was louder and sharper than the others, a flood wave of sound that drowned all others.<p>

"Radiation warning! We have to evacuate!" His older colleague screamed at him from below.

While stumbling towards the ladder that went down to the main floor, Calor couldn't help notice that the air around him had gotten very hot. Sweat was starting to pour out of his skin, the place had turned into a sauna in a matter of seconds, and the temperature continued to rise.

"Coming!" He screamed back.

It was getting harder to breath, something bad had made its way into the room, a toxic blur that made his eyes hurt. Hot air blew towards him as he slid down the ladder.

"Go! Go!" The other one hissed at him as his boots clanged against the floor below.

Calor was shocked to see that the environment of the reactor-pit could turn so hostile so fast. Only a few seconds had passed since the alarm went off, and already they were about to burn to death. He wanted to ask Goroth about what he was doing - why he continued to hang over his console rather than head for the exit - but he ended up choking on the words. Goroth was typing in some sort of command, probably following orders from the bridge. Calor didn't want to leave him behind, so he choked some more, tried to hold his breath, and waited. A few painfully long and unpleasant seconds passed by, Calor felt as if he was boiled in his own sweat. He was very relieved when Goroth hit the execute button.

"Now we go!" Goroth screamed as he hurled around, Calor noticed that he had gotten a unhealthy looking red taint to his brown skin

Two thick fire-doors separated them from the cool and safe normality of the main corridor. The system worked just like any other airlock, the inner door had to close before the outer one could open. In between those two events, a vacuum-pump sucked the radioactive air out of the sealed gap between the doors. For any Human, such rough treatment would cause ruptured eardrums, bloody nose, and crippling pain that would continue for a long time after the atmosphere was re-established, but Klingons were rougher creatures - rough enough to handle a few seconds of vacuum without screaming. When the outer door starting to lift, a welcoming breeze of fresh and cool air blew in through the gap. Calor took a deep breath before he went down on all four. With such intense radiation building up at the other side it was best to have two layers of insulation between them and the reactor-pit, so he rolled under the gap as soon as it was large enough to squeeze through. As soon as Goroth was clear as well, he leaped over the nearest wall-panel and pushed the button that brought the outer door back down.

"I am too old... for this shit!" His companion complained while rolling over on his back. He seemed completely exhausted.

"We got a good dosage of radiation in there, so you might not get much older. What where you doing anyway?" Calor asked, looking down on him.

"The bridge... wanted me... to eject... the warp... core."

Calor had never heard such heavy breathing. On the sound of it, Goroth's lungs were about to collapse.

"Why?" He asked.

"The intermix... chamber... is no longer... responding to... command"

There was no point in further questioning, not when his partner was in such a bad state. Calor sat down beside him, waiting for the med-team to arrive. Goroth continued to gasp for air, heavy heaves that gradually shifted into rapid panting instead.

"Asthma!" He squealed with great effort, as if he was talking through a very narrow tube.

"Hm?" Calor looked curiously towards him.

They had worked together for quite some time now, and since Goroth loved to talk, Calor felt he knew almost everything about his older collegue. The two of them made up the day-watch in the reactor-pit. Calor on impulse, Goroth on warp.

"Its why... I never... joined... away-team..." Goroth moaned.

"Really? I never joined because I love technical stuff. Anything I can do for you?"

There was not. The inhaler had been left behind in the pit, and it would be madness to go back in there.

Soon, the med-team would arrive, and they would bring with them all sorts of pills, liquids and injections designed to cleanse the radiation out of their bodies. Calor was not looking forward to his treatment. He had heard that the anti-rad soap smelled foul, and that all the other stuff made you feel even more sick than the radiation did.

* * *

><p>The mood among the bridge-officers was dark, and very soon now, the bridge itself would turn dark as well. The emergency batteries had been drained in order to get the warp-core running, and now that they had ejected it, they were left without any power-source except the puny leftovers stored within the inductors and transformers scattered around the ship. The warp-core was flying freely through space, and when it exploded in a minute or so, their sensors would not be able to pick it up. They would just as dead as the rest of the ship.<p>

"Fifteen seconds to shut-down" Kuula`Norr informed.

"Will we loose gravity?" Dall`ek wondered.

"Yes"

According to the Klingon code-of-honor, both captain and crew should die with the ship. This was the reason behind the absence of escape-pod's in Klingon birds-of-prey, but Dall`ek was a bit uncertain if it applied when the ship was out of harms way, a lame duck with a live crew, rendered incapable of exploding on its own. Should he ask Ursull to beam them over to her ship? Or would that be dishonorable? Perhaps he should use the scout to exterminate the alien colony at Nibulus 5 and then evacuate the crew to the surface? A Klingon colony out here, at the edge of the neutral-zone could be useful - perhaps the defense league would agree to sponsor them with a few...

The lights went out with a sharp click, interrupting his line of thought. Now, only a few strips of red, self-luminous glass built into the walls hindered the room from going pitch-black. At first Dall`ek could only see the red strips, it took time for his eyes to adjust. Then his communicator beeped. Could it be Ursull? He took it out of his pocket and looked at it's green-glowing screen. "Daak Clanship" it said.

"Hello?" He said, holding it against his ear.

"Wow! I have never seen a bird of prey getting so profoundly beaten!" Ursull screamed in ecstasy, sounding disturbingly happy about it.

"Yeah..." Dall`ek replied, tired and depressed.

"Did you take out the source by the way? I was busy elsewhere" She asked with the eager curiosity of a hyperactive child.

"Did we take out the source?" Dall`ek asked W.

Even with everything falling apart so fast, a good weapons officer could have managed to return fire without bothering his captain with it.

"I did. I launched a photon-torpedo just as that last warhead materialized" W said, confirming that he was a good weapons officer indeed.

"Direct hit?" Dall`ek inquired.

"Direct hit" Weapons confirmed.

"Good. Did you hear that Ursull, we took out the source!" Dall`ek screamed in triumph. They may have lost their ship, but at least they had managed to retaliate.

"We took out a lot of things our selves, ground defenses are completely wiped out, so I think it should be safe to beam down our away-teams now" Ursull informed proudly.

"I am sorry, but we will not be joining you. Our ship is beyond repair, so you must continue on your own" Dall`ek stated sadly.

"Nonsense!" Ursull protested, sounding quite angry.

"Your ship is so radioactive that it shows up as a white dwarf on our scanners, you and your crew have no choice but to beam right over to our for radiation-treatment" She continued.

"I... I appreciate that" Dall`ek stuttered, both relieved and surprised by her generosity.

"Some of our crew-members might be a bit more radioactive than others though, I suggest you isolate them from the rest" He added.

"I was not born yesterday Dall`ek of house Dalius, I know how to run a star-ship" Ursull said slowly, pretending to be insulted.

"Please proceed" Dall`ek sullenly confirmed, in that depressing moment realizing that this might be his final minute in the captain's chair.

"Stand by"

When Ursull hung up on him, Dall`ek felt alone in the room despite the presence of his trusted bridge-officers. A feeling of intense resignation washed over him.

"We are evacuating" He mumbled to the others.

The sadness in his voice did not pass unnoticed,

"The nearest repair-dock is not that far away, really" Naq`Da tried to comfort him.

"Don't worry about it, all she needs is a fresh stroke of paint" Kuula`Norr claimed, a lie so gross it would make most Humans laugh. Klingons however, had never mastered the art of irony.

"The plasma-cannon is still intact" Weapons informed, his bass voice even deeper than normal.

"Same with the sensor-array" Sholax sneaked in.

"Thanks for the effort" Dall`ek said dryly. He was still unhappy, but the attempt at improving his mood was never the less a nice gesture that warmed his hearth somewhat.

Then the bridge faded out, its metallic greenness blended in with the sterile whiteness of the other ship's medical bay.


	22. Chapter 22: Contested space

Atmospheric flight without anti-gravity technology was noisy, specially when using a helicopter rather than a plane. Prince Yumaar had requested Jonas for a private meeting, and now the pilot was taking him above the suburbs of Thronar, the capital city where the royal castle could be found. Jonas tried to block out the annoying noise of the primitive gasoline engine and focus on the view instead. He had not yet visited any other cities in the kingdom, so he did not know if the large, mostly yellow blocks that dominated the semi-urban landscape were a distinct feature of this suburb in specific, or if it was the same all over the kingdom. The broad highways that curved between these massive structures were integrated into a finer network of roads that went across the well-trimmed plains of bluish grass that separated the blocks from each other, balancing the artificial constructions with a hint of organic naturalism. Brown mega-mushrooms had been planted in a semi-coincidental pattern, scattered across the blue plains. When flying closer, Jonas noticed that the highways were used exclusively for heavy transport. Trailer-trucks who dragged long rows of wheeled containers behind them seemed to have a monopoly on the central lanes, while public buses traversed the outer ones. Once in a while they drove into small pockets, making short stops to drop off and take in new passengers. Other than people waiting for the bus, the sidewalks were also used by bicyclers. All these people were brought up to the highways by big elevators built into the tall pillars who supported it. There was nothing exotic about this, it was in fact very similar on Earth. Jonas was happy to see that the K`hmynians as well, had managed to do away with the egocentric and inefficient menace that was personal-cars.

On their way across the country-side, Jonas had spotted several of the impact-sites created by the Klingon weaponry. The massive pillars of thick smoke that reached skywards bore testimony of the massive destruction that had taken place from miles away. True, they had successfully incapacitated one Klingon ship, but he knew that it would be of little comfort when compared to the heavy losses that had been inflicted upon the K`hmynians. Jonas was not looking forward to hearing the exact number, as he knew it would be sky-high. The Klingons had taken them all by surprise when they had showed up with two ships rather than one. The second one had not even been of the normal small type, but a battle-cruiser - the heaviest and most powerful bird of prey in the Klingon arsenal. It was not good, not good at all. Jonas feared that Yumaar would be angry at them for not giving exact information.

The royal castle was built at the edge of a vertical cliff that split the city into two halves. The lower district was a somewhat chaotic labyrinth made from low, gray and flat-roofed buildings in different shapes. It ended in a thick brick-wall down by the river that had lost its original purpose countless centuries ago. This wall formed a semi-circle around a snug-looking fishing-village of small brick-houses with pointy roofs in flashy colors - it looked very traditional. The higher district on top of the cliff was a completely different story - basically a cluster of blocks and skyscrapers. None of them were as slim as the skyscrapers on Earth, and they had less windows. Behind this dense cluster of buildings followed the suburbs of highways and parks, and here - were there was more space to evolve on - the blocks turned into super-heavy mega-structures. Some of them were so tall they stretched all the way up to the noisy helicopter, Jonas had to lift his gaze to see the huge satellite dishes on their roof-tops.

The castle was surrounded by a circle-shaped mushroom-forest that turned into parklands a kilometer or so away from the castle. The castle it self was very interesting. A white egg-like material covered the entire building and its appendixes, forming a sharp contrast to the huge red windows that were built into the smooth, organic shapes. The futuristic look was very different from the medieval castles on Earth. It was bigger too, absolutely worthy of a well-functioning kingdom that had made its way into early space-age. Sharp spires that stretched hundreds of meters into the air shoot up from the main structure, a inward-curving cylinder that was a kilometer or so across. Had it been built for Humans it would have held somewhere between seventy and a hundred stories, but since this was a K`hmynian structure, and since K`hmynians were quite short, Jonas figured that it was closer to two hundred.

The helicopter flew in between the spires the encircled the central tower, making a soft landing upon the platform that grew out of it half way to the top. When Jonas stepped out on the white tiles and looked backwards, he could see all the way to the river at the edge of the horizon. There was a hint of smog in the air, it gave the panorama a reddish veil that was at its densest above the old city. The river itself seemed as dead and still as the surface of a mirror. The masses of water sucked in the colors of its surroundings, making it a mix of the ever-gray sky, the red air, and the brown mushroom-wilderness that started on the other side. Jonas took a deep breath of the still air while enjoying the panorama. He felt very privileged to be here, and rightly so.

Prince Yumaar emerged from the tower-entrance, he walked towards the helicopter with long, confident strides. Jonas waved towards him, then he started walking as well. They met half-way between the helicopter and the tower, Yumaar looked up at Jonas with a curious gaze.

"You must wonder why I called for you" He asked as his smaller blue hand reached out to shake Jonas big pink one.

"Not really. What ever it may be, I am at your service" Jonas answered, smiling broadly - the helicopter ride had put him in a good mood.

"Come inside then"

Jonas was half-way expecting a tour of the tower, a chance to overlook the city from the glass-chamber he had spotted at its top-floor while the helicopter was descending. That would have been swell, so he could not help feeling a bit disappointed when the elevator started moving in the opposite direction, down to the very deepest levels of the castle. Yumaar lead the way down a broad hallway, it ended in a room that looked like a cross-over between a lecture-hall and a amphitheater. The only loose objects in the room were a flat-screen TV and the federation-style reading-pad that it was connected to through a black cable of K`hmynian origin. They were both lying on top of the rectangular elevation that grew out at the far-end of the podium, behind the speaker's stand.

"Who gave you the pad?" Jonas wondered.

"I had Zin beam it over to me before the attack, it contains some maps of the galaxy he says, but I can't make it work" Yumaar said.

"I can help you out with it, but it might not be compatible with the screen"

Jonas walked up to the pad and turned it on. The opening menu appeared as it should do, the files stored within it were organized into a alphabetic list of folders. He scrolled through them, eventually tapping his way into the biggest and most detailed star-chart installed. So far so good, but it would be even better to get it up on a bigger screen. Plugging it to a K`hmyinian TV was a bit dumb though, it was a miracle that Yumaar had even found a cable that matched the pad's outtake. The only chance at making it work was if the pad had some sort of auto-match program installed. Such programs could figure out alien technology and adapt the federation equipment so that it worked together. It was very a good tool to have if you came across abandoned alien ships or structures that you wanted to take control over, but they were kind of heavy though. Jonas very much doubted that there was enough storage-room for such advanced programs inside the small memory-chip of a humble data-pad.

"How are the others holding up?" Yumaar asked while Jonas typed a set of search-criterias into the pod.

"They are all over at that forest-mansion with your dad, Zin and Jeff are a bit frustrated about loosing the transporter" He answered.

"You should have seen the explosion! One of the nukes were still inside when that plasma-thing hit it, Kablam!" Yumaar made a dramatic gesture with his arms, trying to illustrate the grandness of the explosion.

"You were close?" Jonas asked, a bit anxious.

Even though the K`hmynians had nuclear warheads, it did not automatically follow that they understood the dangers of radiation. During their studies on other civilizations and their history, the federation had learned that such knowledge often was bought at a high price.

"Hell no! I'm not stupid. I watched a recording right before you came" Yumaar assured him.

"Good! - Aha! Here we are"

The bigger screen lit up at the same time as he finished talking, it displayed the same image as the small one did - just like he wanted it to. It was a representation of the Alpha-quadrant, with the most important systems and objects installed into it. Due to the limited storage-capacity of the pod, it was not good enough to use for real-life navigation, but it could be used to show Yumaar the bigger picture, and take him on a superficial tour around the neighborhood of his planet.

Jonas introduction was as basic and simple as he could possibly do it:

"Basically, we have two imperial powers in our region of space. Our federation is the blue area in the middle, here"

Her said while pointing out the area on the screen.

"On the left we have the Romulan Empire in violet, and the red region below us is the Klingon Empire - both of them rather mean. The smaller plots you see between us and the Klingons are the Tholians, the Orions and the Gorns. They are not really a problem as long as we stick to our side of the boarders."

Jonas continued to move his index-finger over the different regions on the map as he mentioned them.

"And you people, you are not an imperial power?" Yumaar wondered.

"Nope, we spread universal rights and democracy. Entry happens voluntarily, you can say we are more comparable to a defensive alliance of equal partners"

"So one can not join without introducing democracy?" Yumaar inquired with a skeptical look on his face.

The Humans had never really managed to make democracy a smash-hit in the galaxy. As far as Jonas knew, they had not even managed to import it to the Vulcans, their closest allies.

"I think some minimal standards must be met regarding technology and the bill of universal rights. Democracy is encouraged, but it is not among the minimum requirements"

Jonas had never cared much for these matters, he could only hope that Yumaar's questions did not get to complicated for his shallow knowledge.

"Bill of universal rights?" Yumaar asked.

"It's a set of rights that all sentient beings have, or should have"

"Do you think we can join?" He was curious to know.

"Definitely not, you are at the Klingon side of the boarder, and even if you were not, only planets united under the same government can apply for membership. We might be able to help you out anyway, but only as long as the Klingons doesn't notice."

"Hmm"

Yumaar rubbed his chin in a thoughtful manner. His antennas started to rotate, seemingly they were sniffing around in the air, searching for new thoughts and ideas they could suck into his head.

When he finally opened his mouth again, yet another question dropped out of it:

"How big is this map?"

"Lets see..." Jonas accessed the file-property screen.

"One thousand five-hundred light-years across" He read off it.

"Wow..." Yumaar said, shocked by the huge number. He got a dreamy look on his eyes while trying to imagine the vast distances.

"Maybe we can have a look at some of the systems closer to us?" He requested when he had pulled himself back together.

"As you wish, but it might not be all that detailed, this is mostly unmapped space for us as well" Jonas warned him.

Never the less he zoomed in on the Nibulus-star until he had a nice little map with nine stars in it. Since Nibulus was quite heavy, the orange ball that represented it was larger than any of the smaller ones that were scattered in a donut-like manner around the edges of the screen. There had probably not been gathered enough data on this area to know for sure, but when looking at it Jonas got the distinct feeling that the smaller stars were all orbiting Nibulus. The most distant one was twelve light-years away, but it never ceased to amaze scientists how long the gravitational pull of a star could reach. The Klingon boarder went as a thin red line across the screen, splitting it in two. Nibulus was still only a few billion kilometers away from the relative safety of the neutral zone, but if these other stars were orbiting Nibulus, it meant that four of them had already been pulled over with it, and that five others might follow within the next couple of years. It would be a tragedy because several resourceful planets and perhaps even unchartered alien civilizations were left at the mercy of the Klingons.

"What is that red thing?" Yumaar asked while pointing towards a gray box that rested between three of the smaller stars. They formed a loose triangle of sorts, around the box.

"Lets have a look..." Jonas tapped the icon, opening its info-screen.

To his amazement, this specific spot had been visited by a starfleet vessel thirty years earlier. A captains-log had been recorded, the map had it stored in both its written and vocal form. The square turned out to be a space-station, and the ship that had found it was a small intrepid-class ship that had been sent out there to map the stars that had surrounded Starbase 82 at that time.

The log was quite long, Jonas activated the auditory version:

_Captains log, stardate 2234,01: _

_We have encountered a large space-station resting in the gravitational zero-point between three stars who all harbor early-stage, post-warp civilizations. These stars are: Umago-Dyno, Umago-Dyno Two, and Ceptus-Major. Each of these star-systems harbor civilizations who are present at the station, a post for trading and diplomatic relations that is much used because it functions as a neutral ground between them. None of the three civilizations are - other than their strange looks and non-humanoid forms - of much interest to the federation. The market-places scattered around the populated levels sells mostly clothes and food, everyone on the embassy-levels tells me that they have no interest in trading or in other ways interacting with the federation. _

_Much more interesting than its inhabitants, is the station it self - its history and technical properties. According to the Inarios - the only bi-pedal race of the three - it was first discovered by one of their pre-warp generation-ships that was heading for the third planet in the Umago-Dyno system, were it later made first-contact with the Upo, the second species who have established a presence on the station. This ship did not have the fuel needed to stop and examine it closely, but a later model equipped with warp-capabilities did. I was granted access to the photos taken by the crew of this ship, photos that showed humanoid skeletons scattered across its many decks. Many of these skeletons had artificial limbs and sensors attached to them, and remains of computer-chips were found within their skulls. _

_Since the data I was given access to will be handed over to more scientific capable hands upon my return to starbase 82, I will make no speculations on my own regarding the origins of these corpses. Instead I will give a easygoing description of the station it self: It's four sides are all equally big, making it a perfect cube with a inner volume of a thousand and two square kilometers - had one removed the floors and the scrap left behind by its original inhabitants. The original systems are all dead now, the small percentage of the station that is used by its current inhabitants is running on technology imported from their home-worlds. The old equipment have been taken apart and shot into space in order to clear floor-space for the shops and marketplaces. The rest of the station can best be described as a dark and cold jungle of wires and dead machinery. We found it both unnecessary and unappealing to explore this ominous and cramped maze on foot, even though it might have given us some more clues about the origins and original functions of the station. A more thorough scanner-sweep made from our ship before departure revealed empty pockets within the structure. When related to the inner electrical grid, their positions implied that these pockets could have held important and energy-demanding systems such as weaponry and propulsion. If so, these objects were removed from the cube long before our arrival._

Yumaar found the log-entry extremely fascinating, probably more so than Jonas, who had heard a lot of similar reports before. The universe was versatile and full of life, so captain-logs were seldom directly boring - it was just that there were so many of them.

"I want to go there!" Yumaar screamed in ecstasy.

"You will need a new warp-drive then, it is seven light-years away" Jonas answered.

"Can you give us one?" He asked, full of hope.

"We might be able to sneak something in. It depends on what the admirals and politicians wants"

"It will take years to decide, wont it? Democracy and bureaucracy and all that?"

"You can always try to build one your self, or maybe another trade-ship drops by" Jonas proposed.

"It better not be Ferengi next time" Yumaar sounded angry, the name of the species was spit out with contempt.

"Thanks for the warning anyway, Starfleet have never encountered these Ferengi"

"Wrong my friend, captain Jonathan Archer of the first Enterprise had his ship robbed by them in 2152"

The voice correcting him belonged to neither Yumaar nor Jonas. They both turned around, looking at Carolyn as she crossed the room. Her broad hips wagged from side to side beneath her skirt, it was quite appealing to the eyes.

"At least somebody have done their homework" Jonas remarked.

"The incident is quite unknown, but according to Archer's log-entry they tried to steal the furniture and the computer-gear at the bridge, as well as his dog" She continued.

"Sounds like them" Yumaar commented with bitter irony.

"So what are you guys up to?" Carolyn nodding towards the screen with the map.

"I am showing Yumaar the starfleet basic-map, now we are looking at the stars surrounding Nibulus" Jonas explained.

"It's mostly uncharted, am I right?" She asked while leaning herself against the podium.

"Right, but we found a alien trading-port seven light-years away, Yumaar wants to go" Jonas informed.

"He has to get a new warp-engine then. Listen, there is something else I want to talk with you guys about"

"We are all ears" Jonas assured her.

"I talked to Kirk and the fleet-admiral at Starbase 82, they are sending the ambassador-ship, its only three days away." Carolyn sat down beside them while speaking.

The federation had one ship that was specially constructed for diplomatic assignments. It had plenty of suits and a crew so service-minded they could keep even the most spoiled diplomat happy. It also had a lot of weaponry, safety was as crucial as luxury for a ship that carried the big-wigs of the galaxy.

"Really?" Yumaar said, still hoping for that great escape out and away from his dads marriage-plans.

"No, you are not going" Carolyn said in a strict tone - reading his mind perfectly. One could almost hear the dream shatter inside Yumaar's chest, Jonas imagined a crystal vase splintering against a mahogany-floor.

"Not even if dad and the other kings..." He started.

"Each king will select four representatives, and your dad wants you to stay at home." Carolyn said.

Yumaar sighed heavily.

"We have to respect the wishes of the local authorities" She added.

"Maybe your friends wants to go? They are still on Nibulus 6 you know" Jonas proposed, an attempt at improving his mood. If Yumaar could not get all the fun himself, he could at least be happy about making his friends happy - or something like that.

"Yeah..." Yumaar answered, still moody.

* * *

><p>A few hundred million kilometers away, Ursull and Dall`ek were standing together, overlooking the corpse of Dall`ek's ship. The window was the biggest one Dall`ek had ever seen, it was in fact so big that it filled the entire outer wall of the room.<p>

"This is were I go to lay my plans" Ursull said with her hands folded together behind her back.

She seemed to enjoy the magnificent view that the room had to offer almost as much as Dall`ek did. His ship at no viewports at all, and watching space with your own eyes was very different from watching them through the flat screen connected to a camera. - It was truly breathtaking.

"I can understand why" He replied.

Dall`ek's gaze shifted from the distant stars to his own ship, his eyes were drawn towards a movement beneath the bridge-head. The small scout had pushed itself clear of the hull, and now it was heading in their general direction. Jaakh was inside it, he was the last one to abandon ship, taking the scout along with him. Very soon now, Ursull would combat a very huge, very dangerous enemy. This was a task that demanded all the fire-power she could bring to the table, so it was quite natural that Jaakh lent them a hand. Dall`ek would have given her the plasma-cannon and the fusion-plant of the "Fist of Kahless" as well, had she not declined his offer. That was several minutes of star-gazing behind them now. Dall`ek had completely forgotten to ask her why, and their dialog had headed in another direction since then.

"Why don't you take the cannon?" He asked again, his second attempt at getting a clear answer from her.

The last time she had insisted on discussing the Mantesians instead, extracting Dall`ek's limited knowledge about the species in order to find out if he knew something she did not.

"I want you to keep it, you have a task to fulfill when I am gone" She said.

"Really? You don't expect a successful outcome?" Dall`ek wondered, surprised by the response.

As he spoke, Jaakh's scout disappeared beneath the window. He was heading for the flight-deck several floors beneath their feet.

"Sure I do, but another branch of my clan have reserved the ship, I have to head home"

"Why do you want me to stay behind?" Dall`ek asked while admiring her profile.

He fancied not only her voluminous bosom, but also the somewhat sharp facial features, the pointy nose and sharp cheek. Her half-curled, thick and grayish mane stood out to all sides behind her bumpy forehead, it looked just like Klingons wanted it to look. Together with her expensive clothing and proud, upright posture it made her look like the sturdy noble-woman she was. The Daak-clan was powerful, and Ursull did well in embodying that power.

"There is something very fishy going on here. Somebody are supplying the natives of Nibulus 4 with state-of-the-art weaponry, I want you to stop them" She said thoughtfully, still gazing upon the stars.

"I cant do much without a warp-drive you know"

Dall`ek said, he was fishing for the one she had taken from the Ferengi ship.

"Unless I find something of great value on the fourth planet, you can't have the Ferengi core, I need it to cover fuel-expenses" Ursull answered.

"Fair enough" Dall`ek complied, doing his best to hide his displeasure.

"Good, but stay cloaked" She advised him.

"Cloaking is a energy-drain you know..."

Even though that was exactly what it sounded like, Dall`ek had not meant it as a hint for charity. - He had barely tried to put focus on a technical issue. Ursull sighed while looking down again, scrutinizing her well-polished leather-boots. Dall`ek feared that she was getting fed up with him and his economic inferiority, so he was relieved when she expressed her next line of thought with the same pleasant tone that she usually addressed him with:

"Ill steal something from the surface for you, my scanners indicate that the natives have fusion-technology" She said.

"I hate to prey on your intelligence, but what about food?" He asked further.

"Find some big farm on Nibulus 4 and scavenge it"

Despite the dark outlook of having to survive on the overly sweet, foul-tasting meat of K`hmynian animals, Dall`ek felt a mysterious lift in his mood.

"We drink to that! Would you like to share a jug of warnog with me? Its the last one I have."

He cordially invited.

"I'd love to! We ran out of the good stuff months ago, these days we are even rationing our synthale!" She said it in a tone way more joyful than the depressive state of their larder.

It warmed Dall`ek's old warrior hearth to see her light up like that, almost as much as it did to finally have something to offer her, and not just the other way around. Even though it might be considered inappropriate to lay hand on such a high-class lady, he decided to take the chance. Very gently, he put his arms over her shoulders and turned her slowly towards the door.

"Your mess-hall or mine?" He asked in a low, seductive manner.

"Your mess-hall smells of burnt plastic and old pooh! She energetically snapped back at him, apparently not understanding the not-so-subtle message between the lines.

"And besides, I never did show you my private quarters..." She added, making a sudden shift in tone. Smooth, soft... and very, very sexy.

"Grrrrrrr" Dall`ek purred while leaning closer towards her.

The sexual tension was heating him up, heavy breathing, hearth pounding.

"Easy tiger" Her voice was a wet whisper that escalated his aroused state up to the point were it became painful - both physically and emotionally. While he gasped for air, she started walking for the door.

Since they were surrounded by her family and crew-members on all sides, it would have been inappropriate for him to do what he wanted to do with her out there in the corridor. He had successfully restrained himself, looking normal all the way into the privacy of her personal quarters.

Perhaps now they could finally...

"I am not going to have sex with you" Ursull cut like a sharp blade into his dirty thoughts.

"No?" Dall`ek replied, baffled.

"What did I do wrong?" He then wanted to know.

"Nothing, but we have work to do"

When she spoke, she was no longer sexy. A hard and cold shell of professionalism seemed to cover her.

"But I thought..."

"This is just not a very good time, that's all. I will drink that warnog with you however"

"I see, well - my offer stands, if you can locate it and beam it over"

Dall`ek told himself that there was no point in being disappointed, that they still had good beer and a glorious battle to look forward too. While he sat down on the fury pelt that covered her large bed, Ursull walked over to a touch-sensitive panel that was built into the wall. A message was waiting for her there, the small screen blinked feverishly to get her attention. The sharp black nails of her slim fingers beeped and bleeped them selves through a series of menus, much more than it would take to make a simple call. When she stopped, she uttered a unhappy grunt.

"What's wrong little miss?" Dall`ek asked.

"The reloading-time for cannon three is twice as long as it should be, engineering have still not corrected it!" She complained.

Dall`ek failed to take a keen interest in the dysfunctional cannon. Actually he hoped it would stay that way for a while longer, but he did not say it out loud off course. Even though he would not get what he had originally hoped for, he never the less enjoyed the atmosphere of Ursull's room. It was no surprise that it held a standard was way higher than the narrow closet he usually slept in.

"I am sending the warnog-request to transporter now" She said.

She typed in a written order and sent it on its way.

"Nice beast by the way, killed it your self?"

Dall`ek nodded towards the huge head that hung from the wall between the bed and the panel. He had never in his life seen such powerful jaws, it looked as if the creature was adapted to a diet of hard rocks. The teeth were all longer, thicker and sharper than what one could usually expect from a mammal, they were more like the teeth of a carnivore dinosaur that ate carnivore mammals for breakfast.

"Yeah, it's a Yuminian blood-hound, I killed it in close combat with my bat`leth"

"Impressive" Dall`ek approved.

Images of Ursull assaulting the big beast flashed by his inner mind. She was dressed in a body-tight hunter-suit, leaping elegantly down from a tree, diving into the huge animal with her razor-sharp bat`leth held before her - an explosion of blood and gore... So sexy...

The distinct sound of the teleporter at work cased Dall`ek to snap out of his daydream and turn towards the sound. A big mug of warnog was re-entering its material form at the floor behind them.

"I have some dry-salted meat that I think will be good with it" Ursull said while getting up from the bed.

While she looked through the cupboard of her minimalistic kitchen, Dall`ek got up as well, taking a short stroll around the room in order to scrutinize the interior - perhaps learning a bit more about the other captain. A large painting caught his interest, it pictured a grand castle surrounded by stony highlands. He moved closer in order to suck in the details.

"Daak castle at Qo`noS" Ursull informed.

She approached him with a wooden tankard in each hand, one of them was handed over to Dall`ek. In return, he filled her tankard with warnog from the equally wooden mug.

"Dry meat at the kitchen table" She said.

The fresh and light taste of warnog was even better if balanced by something at the other end of the scale, and this was were the dense and salty meat entered the picture. Had Ursull had a third arm, she could have brought it along, but she had not. Dall`ek walked over to get some, simultaneously conversing the other captain.

"Our clan has a castle too you know" He said, sounding semi-casual.

"Oh, where is that?" Ursull asked, interested.

"Cibbish-3"

"Wasn't that place attacked by Nausicaan pirates recently?"

Ursull took a mouthful of warnog while waiting for the answer. Dall`ek himself was busy chewing on his first bite of dry and salt meat. It was rather wiry even for sharp Klingon teeth, so the conversation was brought to a temporal halt. In the end he gave up, and swallowed the peace whole. It hurt a bit on its way down, but at least he was free to speak again.

"Yeah, they thought they could bring us down, but we crushed them eventually" He answered.

"Losses?" Ursull wondered.

"Plenty, it is why my clan is so poor"

"To victory" Ursull lifted her tankard to a toast.

"Let's drink to that" Dall`ek said, lifting his tankard as well.

Then they were both emptied.

* * *

><p>The problem with the third cannon was eventually resolved, bringing the Daak-Clanship back up to its full performance. Hungry for battle, Ursull ran as fast as she could back to the bridge. There had been too much talk and too little action lately, now she could almost taste the blood of their enemies on her lips. Dall`ek had wanted to accompany her on the bridge, but she had firmly refused his request, knowing very well that it wounded his warrior-pride. The problem was that survival was not at all certain against such a huge enemy, and somebody had to stay behind, ensuring Klingon presence in the system. To her at least, this seemed more important than his immediate emotions.<p>

When she entered the bridge, she was pleased to see that every single one of the consoles that were scattered around the large room, were manned.

"What are those Mantesian crybabies up to now?" She screamed towards the operator in charge of monitoring enemy-vessels.

"Still heading towards Nibulus 3, steady and slowly as a Glubishian snail"

"And they will never get there! Cloak vessel!" She roared.

Once activated, the cloaking-device covered the ship in a blanket of exotic energy that made it invisible to both the naked eye, and all but the most advanced sensor-systems. These systems were the pride of the Klingon society, a technological achievement that was unmatched by any known civilizations.

"Cloak engaged!" Another Clanswoman shouted back at her.

The cloak had no effect what so ever on the interior of the ship, but the lights never the less dimmed down while in cloaking-modus. The sparse illumination created an atmosphere of mystery within the bridge. Ursull's lips split into a wide, predatory grin that hardly could be seen through the darkness. She loved to travel under cloak, to blend in with the stars like a deadly ghost. It made her feel immensely powerful.

"Take us into an intercept course with the Mantesian ship, full impulse and prepare the warp-core"

She ordered.


	23. Chapter 23: Size matters

The Mantesian ship was all city in every direction, a chaotic jungle of spires, towers, boxes, domes and egg-shaped citadels that all grew out from the fat cylinder at its core. This cylinder probably contained the original ship, while the kilometer-tall extensions were appendixes that had been added whenever a population-increase combined with access to the right building-materials made it feasible to do so. The Mantesian ship had been built with very basic materials, many of them being iron-rich alloys. Nibulus 3 fitted well into this scheme. The planet was composed almost exclusively of iron, and the huge Nibulus sun would make a good and powerful power-source during the energy-demanding process of turning the raw ore into new living-space.

The technical scan continued its sweep across this monstrosity of a ship, looking for weak points that could be exploited. Ursull was under the impression that everything about it was pretty low-tech, and low-tech ships were often handicapped by primitive - and therefore weak - power-plants. She was hoping to find a weak first-generation fusion-plant, or maybe an even more primitive solution: nuclear-fission. The low output would force them to choose between maintaining shields and returning fire during a heavy bombardment, making them easy-prey.

To her dissatisfaction, things didn't turn out to be that easy.

As the scan progressed, it revealed that the slow-moving beast carried with it ten large dynamos, all of them fueled by anti-matter. Several massive force-fields stored enough of the good stuff to blow a red giant to smithereens, and they even had an atomic-accelerator facility that could produce more antimatter, should they run dry. It was in other words, highly unlikely that the Mantesians would run out of juice before they did.

Ursull her self did not see any weaknesses in their structure what so ever, so now she turned to her scanner-operator for a second opinion.

"How do we do this?" She asked the young warrior.

Thumilia - One of Ursull's nephews - had just gone through Duh-lut`hurr, a ritual that signified her entry into the warrior-caste, and the transformation from child to adult. Ursull thought of her as a feisty little brat with limited cognitive skills, one that was not really cut out to handle the advanced systems of a warship. She had not expected her to pass the technical course, but since she had proven herself theoretically, Ursull had felt compelled to bring her along when embarking upon her journey of plundering.

"We find a weak spot in their hull and punch through!" Thumilia screamed.

Thumilia's proposal was just as stupid and shallow as Ursull had expected it to be. Where did such genes come from? Ursull's brother was as wise as he was brave, so it could not be him. His mate had never struck her as particularly dumb either... Just bad luck maybe, or something she would grow out of.

"Send your results over to Vook for tactical analysis" Ursull ordered while looking over her screen.

"Yes ma`am"

The schematics she had ended up with, were actually pretty good. Ursull was surprised to see that Thumilia had mastered that art of scanning. She had made the proper adjustments in order to penetrate the primitive alloys, and she had even managed to compensate for the various magnetic distortions found within the ship.

"Well done" Ursull complimented.

"Thank you ma`am"

Ursull gave her a gentle slap on the shoulder before returning to her seat. It did not take long before she got a peace of constructive feedback to elaborate on.

"Their shields are not graviton based... Rather, they are quite similar to the experimental void-fields used by our dragoon warships... during the late second dynasty"

Science officer Vook was an old crook with the voice of a rusty chainsaw. The act of speaking seemed to strain her, it went quite slowly - to say the least.

"Oh? That sounds incredibly sophisticated. Keep talking" Ursull encouraged her.

She was tempted to say "incredibly boring", but she held her tongue. The ancient fossil of a lady took pride in the impressive knowledge she possessed. It was the result of a sharp mind, and over sixty years of service to the clan. Ursull did not want to puncture the swollen self-image that it had given her.

"They are constructed... by compressed dark-matter magnetism with Planch-overlay... thus creating a zero-field that never the less... is weakened by the introduction of normal energy... due to the inter-dimensional flux it... creates"

It took the dried up raisin an eternity to finish her sentence. Vook's shock-white mane did not only lit up the room, it also screamed retirement. It was a good thing their cloaking-field was so good. If not there would be no time for this stuff.

"And how does this help us?" Ursull asked, slightly annoyed.

"We should not use the disruptor-cannons... as they are outside the definition of normal energy... Such weapons have no effect on... anomalies involving dark-matter... or dimensional disturbances"

Ursull hissed towards her, exposing a mouthful of sharp teeth.

"But disruptors is our main weapon!" She protested loudly.

"Some times, one has to withdraw in order to..." Vook started.

"NEVER! SEND OUT THE SCOUTS!"

Ursull was furious, enraged to the brink of explosion by the mere thought of retreat. It simply could not be done, it was below their honor. As a clan-elder, that wrinkled, worn-out bitch should know that.

Another console-operator forwarded the order to Jaakh and Derminea, who had taken positions within their respective scouts. They were to contribute to the coming barrage from within the concealed safety of the bigger ship's stealth and deflector-fields. Actually it was not even necessary to leave the shuttle-bay in order to do this, but it would give them an independent aim, something that could come in handy if the mothership was knocked out of balance.

"Young miss... I must strongly advice...!" Vook started.

"Stop pestering me!"

At this point Ursull felt a powerful urge to draw her d`k-tagh and bury it deep into Vook's flat and baggy breast. For Klingons, desire had never been far away from action - all the more reason to restrain herself.

"Ursull!" A sharp voice cut in.

She snarled towards the voice that demanded her attention. Actually, Krakhiy was the only one of her crew-members that she felt a deep respect for, but in this moment she felt like cutting her into very small peaces as well.

"We would die a honorable death here, but there is one thing we need to do first!"

"Spit it out!" Ursull roared across the room. The wave of sound carried with it immense aggression.

"We need to hail the enemy. They might respect Klingon space and move of"

Calm, cold and logical. What did Krakhiy think she was? A Vulcan or something?

"They will trace the signal and bust our cloak" Ursull argued, suppressing her white-glowing anger.

"We do what we always do, keep our message short and our course erratic - it will be no problem!" Krakhiy proposed, unaffected by the emotional state of her captain.

"Proceed!" Ursull snapped back.

"Laying in evasive-rotation, pattern Hajikhg-Demi" The navigator informed.

"Negative, change that to Gho`loth-Hixy" Ursull corrected.

While she was talking, her com-officer had prepared the standard hailing-procedure.

"Sending message on all frequencies when you are ready" She said with her index-finger resting upon the switch that would turn on the camera above the main monitor.

"Ion charge building up in guidance-thruster A-2" Some idiot howled at her from the row of secondary monitors at the back, giving Ursull yet another matter to attend to.

Spaceships as big as the Daak Clanship demanded a lot of micro-management to run, even with state-of-the-art computers. Several small dilemmas followed in the wake of the new flight-pattern Ursull had ordered, and since it took quite a strain on the thrusters, they got technical issues as well. All this happened simultaneously with weapon preparations, so it was no mystery that Ursull suddenly found her self barking orders in all directions.

When they finally were prepared for battle, she was so exhausted that she had even forgotten to be angry. A few few deep breaths was needed to get back in shape.

"Drakhij - open that all-frequency channel you were talking about" She said sullenly.

"Yes mam" The operator named Drakhij replied.

The button was switched on, hurling the sight and sound of the bridge across the gap that separated the two ships. One of them was twice as big as the island of Manhattan, the other no larger than the 9-11 memorial tower. No sane captain would go against such a massive opponent alone, but Klingons had never been very sane when it came to battle.

"This is the Daak Clanship, representing the Klingon Empire, you are trespassing Klingon space, and...

"Gho-loh-touh?"

The sound of the alien that interrupted her, came at them raw and unprocessed. It had clearly gone through the translator-program unchanged.

Ursull sent Drakhij a quizzical look.

"Translator-program is running, searching for match" Drakhij assured her.

"What about image?" Ursull wondered, nodding towards the black main-screen.

"No image could be extracted from the data-package received, working on it"

"Gho-loh-touh?" The alien asked again.

This time, the voice was accompanied by a second data-stream, a video-format their computer could understand. The black screen lit up, the image transmitted was that of an androgynous and frail looking alien that floated upside-down within an egg-shaped and feature-less room. The smooth face started in a large, flat and bold scalp, ending in a pointy chin with a small lip-less mouth embedded into it. His skin was very white, almost glowing. It was probably the stark contrast to his big black eyes that made it so. Ursull did not know exactly why she immediately had thought of it as a he. Other than his big forehead, there was nothing masculine about his features. It lacked the deep ridges who Klingon females found attractive in male partners, but it was never the less quite...

"Gho-loh-touh!" The alien asked for the third time.

His eyes narrowed a bit, a sign of aggression?

"Still no match! I don't think Mantesian is installed into our translator" Drakhij said.

"Does this mean we can stop talking and start shooting?" A eager warrior inquired.

The voice belonged to one of the secondary officers in the back - Tagh-D`juc or something like that, damage-report & analysis.

"If we don't fire soon, the Mantesians will! their weapons are charging!" Thumilia warned.

"Well done Thumilia" Ursull congratulated her young niece again, happy to hear that she had interpreted the enemy weapons signatures correctly. Getting such warnings in time was a matter of life and death.

"Where do we fire on that thing?" Ursull asked Vook, who was sitting at her left side.

She could only hope that the old woman would not lapse into another one of those lengthy lectures this time.

"We need to pummel... a hole through their zero-field... and then get a torpedo through...

So slow, and meanwhile the enemy was charging their weapons. Ursull tapped her fingers impatiently against her armrest.

"before the tunnel collapses... focus everything on the same spot..."

"Can we use the concussive charge cannon, or will it be the same as with the disruptors?" Ursull needed to know.

"We... can" Vook confirmed.

"Good! Charge concussive-cannon!" Ursull ordered.

The ship hummed and vibrated as enormous amounts of energy were pumped into the charge-generator in the ball-shaped section below them. The humming increased in intensity together with the emotional state of the bridge-crew. The experimental CCC had only been used two times so far on their journey, and both times it had missed it's target. The weapon was immensely powerful, but also very sluggish and imprecise. Had it not been for their cloaking-device, it would be impossible to get close enough to use against anything but stationary targets on asteroids and planets. Luckily for them, the Mantesian ship was so inflexible that it almost fitted into this category. When the cannon was fully charged, Ursull ordered her helmswoman to sneak in on the bigger ship, eventually bringing them so close they literary crawled around on their hull. At this point, the charge would use only two seconds to pass the fifty kilometer gap that separated them.

"They have not detected us!" Thumila reported.

The big city in front of them rotated slowly on its axis while floating drowsily through space. Dim rays of light escaped into space from numerous glass-covered slits and round little holes in the fat and sturdy hull. The slow moving fortress seemed to be in a state of peace and tranquility, but everyone on the bridge of the Daak Clanship knew that their brutal weapon-array was charged to the brink of bursting, and that every known wavelength was hurled into space from their radio-tower in a frantic attempt at busting their cloak.

"Try to make it hit at the center, then launch photon torpedoes against the site of impact" Ursull ordered.

The Concussive-charge was unleashed with a huge bang that sent shock-waves rippling through the decks. This was a weapon that should not be used too often, or it would tear the ship apart. Ursull hung on to her armrests as the floor started to vibrate violently. The quake ended as abruptly as it had started, continuing through the rooms above and behind them. None of the consoles had exploded, everyone were still on their feet, big flash of light on the main screen.

"Direct hit!" The weapons operator screamed in triumph.

"Recharge! Launch torpedoes!" Ursull roared. She was so tense she was sitting at the edge of her seat.

A volley of three torpedoes were launched in quick succession. One belonged to the forward torpedo-bay, one to the aft, and the third came from Jaakh's scout. All three were coordinated so that they hit close enough to minimize the time-frame in which the energy was released, while still not making the shock-waves from the explosions so dense that it ignited the next torpedo in line prematurely.

The invisible wall surrounding the Mantesian ship was a strong one, they had struck with the force of almost fifty megatons, and still it would not give in. Jaakh and Derminea added two thin lines of luminous plasma-fire on top of it, but such puny firepower was pretty hopeless considering that the heavy artillery had failed. It all seemed to disappear into a invisible black hole, the many towers and domes of the Mantesian ship were left unscratched.

"I can't believe it!" Ursull roared, so frustrated she tried to pull the hair of her scalp.

"Why did the second dynasty abandon these shields anyway?" Some nameless and anonymous console-operator wondered.

"Let's get out of here!" Another one screamed, afraid of the unavoidable counterstrike.

"It has to do with the..."

Vook wanted to answer the question of the first one, but dramatic events taking place simultaneously put a resolute stop to her history-lesson.

Phaser-fire.. A meter-thick, accurate and deadly beam. The Mantesians had tracked the trails of the photon-torpedoes back to their source, and now the Klingons found them selves at the mercy of the most perversely oversized phaser-banks in the galaxy. Their shield-integrity took a steep dive upon impact, dropping from hundred to sixty percent at the blink of an eye. A second bank took over where the first one stopped, draining them of another forty.

There was no time to give orders, the ship was being ripped apart - a mayhem of fires, smoke and howling alarms. Several panels had exploded, a clanswoman screamed in agony. The Daak Clanship was closer to a violent death than ever before, and had it not been for the skills of their helmswoman, they had not survived. Impulse and warp was engaged at record-time, the ship soared through space at a rate of acceleration ten times higher than what it was built for.

The hull screeched and whined, threatening to buckle under the enormous pressure it was subjected to. Neither the inertial dampeners nor the hull-integrity field was powerful enough to take the sting out of the brutal G-force created by impulse-engines on total overdrive. The bridge-crew could feel it as well, even though they were much better shielded than the outer hull. Those who had been thrown out of their seats by the Mantesian counterstrike, stumbled, rolled and fell backwards until they slammed heavily against the inner wall. The rest were squeezed so hard against their seats that the air was forced out of their lungs. Ursull's heartbeat rose to dangerous levels as another yellow-shimmering beam of phaser-fire swept through space ahead of them. It passed way too close for comfort, luckily it died out before it could find its target. Another alarm went of at the impulse-console. Had the operator not been lying like a pile of dead meat against the hind-wall, she would probably have screamed that the impulse-manifolds were overheating.

Then they reached the speed of light.

At this point the laws of nature did not allow them to accelerate any further without engaging warp, so the impulse-engines automatically turned them selves off, instead starting the much needed emergency cool-down procedure.

The beaten and bruised crew-members who had been washed up against the wall, rose slowly to their feet. The one responsible for the propulsion-systems stumbled back to her console, a cut in her forehead caused droplets of pink Klingon blood to drip down on the smooth, transparent surface that formed a protective film over the touch-sensitive panel. She hung over it for a second, extracting the current status of warp and impulse out of the jungle of blinking symbols and lights that manifested itself on the screen it was connected to.

"The right exhaust-nozzle has been deformed due to pressure-overload, it will not work on full efficiency when re-activated" She said, her voice strained by physical pain.

"Can we slow down again? I want to resume the plundering of Nibulus" Ursull responded.

"Probably, but deceleration will be a bit rocky"

"Do it, put us into high orbit"

Everything had happened so fast, only a minute had passed since they opened fire on the Mantesian ship. Even though it had not exactly come as a surprise, the overwhelming firepower of the enemy had left them all shaken. To take a positive outlook, the Daak Clanship now had valuable data to share with the rest of the fleet. They knew for example, that each phaser-burst from the enemy reduced the shields of a standard battle-cruicer with approximately 40%, and if Thumilia had done her job properly, they also knew how much their volley of three fully charged torpedoes and one concussive-charge had hurt them. When asked, Thumilia had a encouraging answer for them:

"Shield thickness reduced by 43,5% in target area, draining 39,7% of their anti-matter supply"

"This is why the second dynasty discarded zero-field shielding... it is too energy-inefficient" Vook said.

The old woman had used all her energy to climb back up on her feet, now she used Krakhiy as support while dragging her half-dead body back to her seat. She groaned as she fell heavily into it, like a sack of potatoes. When relieved of this burden, Krakhiy headed for her own seat.

"By the gods ancient one! When will you understand that a starship is not a place for someone at your age?" Ursull screamed towards her.

"On the contrary young miss... you need my experience"

"What my sister is saying, is that we can't give you special treatment." Krakhiy said while dumping down at the advisory position by Ursull's side.

"Even old crows deserve to die... a clean death in honorable... combat... don't you think?"

"No way, old crows should stay home and manage the clan-castle!" Ursull protested.

Since both ways were deeply embedded into Klingon culture, it was not really any right or wrong answer, other than that it was up to the captain. And since Ursull had accepted her application in the first place... Sigh.

Next time, maybe - she would think twice. It was not really anything wrong with the way Vook did her job, she just seemed... misplaced. On a more instinctive, subconscious level, Ursull felt that she challenged her position as ship-captain. This was usually the oldest one on board, but the presence of Vook made the Daak Clanship an exception from this rule.

While Ursull, Vook and Krakhiy had been conversing, an emergency-team arrived to fix up the bridge. The fires were put out, and new panels were beamed in from the storage-room to replace the damaged ones. Everything was fixed in a hyperactive, super-efficient whirlwind of seemingly emotionless professionalism. Ursull had not noticed, but she had never gotten a proper damage-report - this was because the panel displaying it had exploded, seriously wounding the operator as well.

The emergency-team marked her with a transporter-beacon, when activated the transporter-room operators immediately locked on to it and beamed her over to the sickbay. Only a small pond of blood remained where her head had once been. The computer system kept track of everyone on board, so when it noticed that she was missing out on her guard-duty, it sent a automated message to her substitute, summoning her to the bridge. The ability to make such rapid fixes was crucial to the survival of any starship, specially the ones made for battle.

The three senior bridge-officers were not affected by the hectic activity taking place around them, they remained free to focus on other subjects. Complaining about Vook and how she failed to fulfill her duties at home was pretty pointless now that they were heading back to their castle anyway, so Ursull shifted subject, quickly outlining the priorities ahead: First the Klingon Defense Force had to be warned about the Mantesian intrusion, the probability of federation infiltration at Nibulus 4, and the spy-mission Dall`ek had been given. Then - more importantly because the wealth of the clan depended on it - they had some plundering to do.

"You go talk with KDF" Ursull ordered Vook.

She had all the security-clearances she needed, and Ursull was tired of seeing her wrinkled face on the bridge.

"I'll be in... the briefing-room... if you need me" Vook said in between some pretty heavy panting. Slowly, she got up and started dragging herself towards the door.

"When our brother Deh`korr takes over this ship, he will probably want to return here, finish the fight we started" Krakhiy thought out loud.

"I think so too," Ursull agreed.

"I might tag along as well, I feel I have unfinished business here" She then added.

"Thinking about begging for a position under your brothers command?" Krakhiy wondered, surprise in her voice.

"Wouldn't dream of it. I have a ship of my own now, a Raptor-class like Dall`ek's - just with state-of-the art weaponry and shielding"

Ursull was proud to reveal her little secret. She had been carrying it around for quite some time now, only a few days had passed since she got the sub-space message from the shipyard orbiting Qo`nos. It was finally completed! Now it waiting patiently for her to return with the Clanship.

"Wow! Congratulations!" Krakhiy screamed, excited on her behalf.

Meanwhile the ship had turned around, and now it was starting to decelerate, preparing to enter orbit around Nibulus 4. The damaged exhaust-nozzle made it a shaky and slow process, so Ursull was relieved when her navigator finally reported that they had arrived.

"Put the planet up on the screen, prepare to transmit my ultimatum" Ursull said.

"Subspace or standard radio-frequencies?" The com-link operator needed to know.

"All frequencies"

Nibulus 4 was very gray today, specially around the equatorial regions. All the white clouds seemed to have gathered around the poles. Had she not known better, Ursull would have guessed that it was a gas-giant rather than a rock-world.

"Ready to transmit" The operator said.

"Proceed"

Ursull rose to her feet in a sudden movement, feeling that it would be way too decadent to stay seated when threatening ones enemies.

"Creatures of Nibulus 4!" She screamed.

"I am captain Ursull Daak, representing the Klingon empire! I am here to collect tributes to the empire on behalf of my clan! "

She paused in a second in order to draw in some air, then she delivered the punch-line:

"Surrender now, and you will be spared, resist, and we will crush you!"

The operator cut the transmission on her signal.

"I highly doubt if they speak Klingonese" Krakhiy commented.

"If they don't, they should learn it."

"What do we want?" Krakhiy wondered.

"Good question, the markets back home are so unstable these days" Ursull said thoughtfully.

With the more advanced civilizations they usually went for anti-matter, warp-plasma, duranium and weaponry. Nibulus 4?... Gold maybe, diamonds - jewelery that could be traded for more useful items if they ran across merchants who dealt with the more vain species, species who were willing to spend big in order to decorate them selves with the shiny stuff. Statues and other cultural artifacts could bring in a good reward as well, archaeologists, anthropologists and other types of snobby academics loved it. Iron maybe? Nah, even though the price was good - good enough to fight the Mantesians over it - it was not nearly valuable enough to be transported inside the relatively modest cargo-bay of a battle cruiser. One needed countless kilometers of floor-space to make it profitable, a typical Klingon ore-transport was three times as long as the Daak Clanship, ninety-five percent of it empty space.

"Incoming message from the surface"

"Let it through"

The image that replaced the planet was that of the western throne-room, one of the three seats of royal power on the planet - but the Klingons didn't know that yet. The caller wore a single-colored tunic in vivid blue. Other than the strong color, it was as straight-forward and simple as the dense hair that formed a helmet-like bowl over his skull. Two antennas were sticking out of it, both of them as blue as his face, but his skin-color was of a tamer shade than that of his tunic. Blue, blue, blue. Ursull didn't like it, she thought it looked artificial - as if he had tried to drown himself in a bucket of paint and then allowed it to dry.

"Greetings, I am king Yon-Kyr of the western kingdom" The alien said.

"And I am Ursull of the Daak clan. Offer me something good, and we might spare your life!"

The alien seemed unaffected by her aggression.

"Can we seek entry into this empire of yours?" He asked in a calm and polite tone.

"Huh?" Ursull was pushed out of balance for a moment, it was a response she had not expected.

"You already are! this is Klingon space, your planet belongs to us!" She then screamed.

"In that case..."

Ursull could not determine the expression in the alien's face. Not fear, not anger, not contempt, not surprise... It was something other than a look of neutral emotionlessness, but she could not understand what it was.

"In that case WHAT?" She roared.

"We wish to pay tribute then. Would you like a golden statue as a token of our friendship? Seventh century artwork, the best on our planet if you ask me"

"How much gold?" Ursull inquired, she glared towards him with hostile skepticism, he glared back with a calm, expression - almost serene in its thorough neutrality.

"We never really weighed it" He answered after a long break of glaring.

"Send us the coordinates, and we will have a look"

"I don't like it" Krakhiy hissed when the transmission ended.

"Gold? What could be better?" Ursull asked.

"There seem to be a lot of it though, I am scanning the target-area now" Thumilia shot into the conversation.

"It could be a Troyan horse" Krakhiy warned simultaneously.

Ursull said nothing, but she was aware of the danger.

The result of the scan was eventually brought up on the main-screen. The statue was ten ton of solid gold- very good indeed. A more thorough scan detected no bombs or other threats hidden within it.

"All clear" Thumilia claimed.

"Okay, lock on, bring it directly to the cargo-bay"

Nobody on board knew it, but the Clanship was only a few seconds away from a calamity of epic proportions. How come? There was no bomb inside the statues, that much was true. Had the Klingons done a wider scanner-sweep however, they would have detected a nuclear warhead positioned within the barrel of a ballistic cannon that was placed only two-hundred meter away from the statue. Just as the statue started to fade - disintegrating into the teleporter-ray - the gun catapulted the warhead into the area, locking it within the teleporter-grid. The plan was quite stupid really, considering all the things that could have gone wrong. The cannon could have missed the target, it could have fired too late, or the Klingons could have been less narrow-minded in their scanning. What made it possible - other than an abundance of luck - was a exploitable weakness in Klingon transporter-technology. Klingon transporters formed square-shaped target-perimeters around the objects they wished to beam, so when a object had a hole in it - or two spires in this case - a lot of air went up together with the object.

Jonas had been hard in his criticism against the plan, so now that it was working, he could barely believe his eyes. His jaw dropped wide-open, and he lost the cup of coffee he had been holding down on the fluffy carpet with the complicated embroideries - probably ruining it completely. The TV in front of him displayed a live-stream video that was aimed in on the area between the spires, and it was here that the the cone-shaped bomb had successfully forced itself into the thick grid of fading air, making a full and sudden stop. The breathtaking and astonishing moment ended as the hovering warhead turned transparent, quickly being reduced to a shadow of itself.

"Wow" Jonas whispered in awe.

Both the bomb and the hideous golden thing with the spires disappeared, leaving nothing but a square of trampled blue grass behind. High on adrenaline, he threw himself over the communicator that lay on the heavily varnished wooden table between him and the TV. Yumaar had been service-minded enough to hook his TV up to the camera that filmed the event, but he depended on Carolyn to get the final result. She and the rest of the crew had used the instruments from the now completely cannibalized "Hidden explorer" to set up a improvised command-hub for them selves out in the mushroom-wilderness between the King's resort at Knoxx, and Thronar. From this hub, they could access all satellites and telescopes administrated by the Northern Kingdom. Jonas would have gone there to team up with them, had he not been held back by Yumaar, who had insisted on teaching him a amazingly complex ball game out in the park.

"Success!" Carolyn screamed at him as soon as he got through to her.

"Really? How much"

"The Klingon vessel has a gaping hole in its belly, it is retreating from orbit"

"Those thick-skinned bastards, I was hoping for total destruction" Jonas opined.

"It could have been, but I just received words that the K`hmynians replaced the original nuke with a plutonium-spiced DGL-bomb, too much civilian infrastructure in the vicinity to risk a nuclear detonation on the surface" She enlightened him.

Jonas was about to respond when Carolyn screamed a disturbing message at him:

"Wait! Someone is beaming down on... on your location!"

That was certainly a surprise! Paybacktime? If so, how did the Klingons find them? These questions flowed through Jonas mind, but he was not really scared. To wake up from a soft afternoon nap, watch some TV and then be slashed open by a enraged Klingon on a vendetta? - Nah, no way. Fate had something different in store for him, guaranteed. Looking around in the room, he was relieved to see that no Klingons had beamed into his luxuriously outfitted suite. - Unless a combat-squad had was about to pour out of the toilet, that was. The door was closed, but he would have heard the sound, would he not? He decided not to worry, and call up Yumaar instead - impossible to work efficiently if one gave in to paranoia.

"Yeah, hello, Jonas here. A bunch of aliens have beamed into the castle, maximum alert"

"Crap! I am evacuating" Yumaar said.

"Do as you wish"

Yumaar hung up on him, Jonas sighed. What to do next? Sit tight maybe? What else? Evacuate with Yumaar? - He didn't feel like it, one ride in that noisy helicopter was more than enough. For all he knew, the park might be filled with snipers, so it could at least be a good idea to stay away from the window. He rolled from the sofa and down to the floor, crawling over to the inner right corner of the room, behind the TV. From this position he did not run the risk of being pinned down by any park-dwelling sniper, and further more: he had a clear shot towards both the toilet and the entrance-door. But did he have his phaser-gun? Without looking down, he let his hand glide over the holster, touching the cold metal. Yup - still there.

The communicator started beeping again, he picked it up. Yumaar again? He let him through.

"You wont believe who I have found standing by the main entrance!" Yumaar screamed through the thick noise of that infernal gazoline-engine who kept the blades of the helicopter spinning.

"No?"

"Khark! the Ferengi-captain! What are the odds?"

"Be careful, keep your distance and have your security-team arrest them"

While hanging up Yumaar again, Jonas realized that he was finally going to meet these "Ferengi" that Yumaar hated so much. It was kind of odd that they would return here though, having fooled Yumaar and all. Was it related to the Klingons somehow? He would find out soon enough.

Somebody knocked on the door, Jonas pulled the phaser out and aimed it towards the wooden surface. At this point he did not really expect the Klingons to come barging in, those guys never knocked. Never the less, it was best to be cautious.

"Come in" He said, his finger on the trigger.

It was a K`hmynian foot-trooper dressed in a thick, bulletproof west, helmet and pants. All three parts shared the same blue and brown camouflage-pattern, the uniform was obviously designed to make the soldier meld in with the K`hmynian countryside. His gun was up and ready to fire. The long barrel rested on Jonas until he had taken his phaser down. Reassured that he did not pose a threat, the barrel followed the movement of the small blue head as it made a 180-degree swoop through the room. Then he stepped cautiously over the doorsill, making as little sound as possible as he sneaked into position beside the closed toilet-door. Other soldiers poured in behind him, taking defensive positions on strategic places within the suite.

"Area secured!" One of them screamed to the others when they were all in.

Jonas rose slowly and cautiously to his feet. Despite the fact that they were there to protect him, he did his best not to make any sudden moves while surrounded by so many guns.

"The Prince says there are Ferengies at the main entrance" He said when he had gotten up.

"Let's move!" The commanding officer ordered.

The soldiers marched back out, leaving Jonas alone in the room. He was soon to follow, but something kept him back. What was that? Thinking... Thinking... - Aha, Tricorder. Could Carolyn beam one over? Right, the teleporter was destroyed in the attack - fuck it.

He stumbled into the empty corridor, leaving the door to his suite open - nothing would be stolen in such a top-security installation as this. The sound of his leather-boots trampling over the polished marble-floor echoed as it bounced of the stone-walls. Big paintings of former kings hung from them, posh characters whose authoritarian gaze seemed to follow his every step. They formed a long row that ended by the stairway. There was an elevator beside it, but Jonas felt like running.

Having made his way to the surface-floor, Jonas continued through the lofty and heavily decorated lobby. Above his head was the most impressive chandelier he had ever seen. It as big as a house, but the countless diamonds that hung from it made it a million times more expensive. They sparkled in the red afternoon-light that flowed through the open gate. Jonas had admired the chandelier thoroughly at an earlier occasion, so he felt no desire to stop and scrutinize it again. Instead he continued towards the light, running down the broad steps that lead towards the patio at the other side. A fresh and cold afternoon-breeze blew towards him, it was a nice change from the still and dry air of his suite. Yumaar`s helicopter was still circling the castle, but from down here the sound was much gentler to the ears than it had been over the communicator.

Countless humanoid figures had clustered at outer edge of the patio, they cast long shadows towards him. At the look of it, The K`hmynian soldiers had surrounded the alien intruders, who seemed to have surrendered without a fight. Jonas ran up to the squad-leader and made a full stop beside him.

"Ferengi?" He asked, heaving for breath while pointing towards the big-headed silhouettes in the middle of the crowd.

"Yes sir"

The thick clouds failed to block out the sunlight completely, and the blood-red sunset was so vivid it blurred his vision. It was impossible to take a better look at the Ferengies without getting much closer, but from where he was standing, Jonas counted little above twenty big-headed silhouettes within the protective circle of armored dwarfs. The intruders were all of similar stature as the K`hmynians, but with broader, more robust looking bodies. They held the arms lifted above their heads, signaling their surrender.

The situation it seemed, was under control.


	24. Chapter 24: Retreat

Teleporter – Offline

Comlink – Offline

Lifesupport – Offline

Shuttlebay – Offline

It had been a crappy day so far, and the red-blinking letters on the main-screen didn't exactly improve it. Ursull sighed loudly, feeling all down and drained of energy. In their current state, it was actually a miracle that they were even capable of even moving forward. Unlikely as it was, both warp and impulse had survived the detonation - the rest was a mess.

Slowly, Ursull stretched out her right hand and let it to fall back down upon the biggest button among the collection that were embedded into the broad armchair. This action shifted the image, replacing the depressing summary of the damage report with the view ahead. Long lines of white were coming at her, first popping up as small grains deep within the infinite backdrop of black. Soon now, they would enter the star-system named Thugg-Krokk. Other then the star itself, the system contained but a single rock-planet.

General Kha`hutt was to be found here, a distinguished and experienced old warrior whose name carried weight even within the High council. Only the best generals were granted responsibility for the boarders of the empire, vulnerable strips of space that were ridden with violent conflicts. Ursull had never met the general in person, but she had heard that he loved a good challenge. If true, the stuff she was about to throw at him would make him scream in ecstasy. The combination of a Mantesian monster-ship trying to grab one of the planets for itself, one fairly well-armed and technologically advanced pre-warp civilization with teleport-capabilities - perhaps due to Federation involvement...

It would take several battle-cruisers to secure the system, battle-cruisers that Kha`Hutt was unlikely to have at his disposal. The areas boarding the neutral zone had been de-prioritized due to the peace-treaty with the Humans. The outcome of those negotiations had made the Humans so happy and relieved that the Klingon military had judged it as extremely unlikely that they would break the treaty. The Humans had even invited generals and High Council nobility and all kinds of big-wigs to cocktail-parties, guided tours on Earth, and other types of hyper-social, gay stuff. - So what were they thinking now? It was too early to say. She lacked hard proof to back up her theory, that the Humans were boosting the natives of Nibulus 4 with advanced weapon-tech.

But before she could adress Kha`hutt with these matters, She had to actually reach the surface, and this was somewhat difficult with both the teleporters and the shuttle-bay wrecked - or "Off-line" as the computer labeled it.

"Do we still have our scouts?" She asked the bridge.

These were the first words she had uttered in several hours. The officers present had all dozed off in their chairs, so it took some time before she got a proper response.

"Uh, moment ma`am" A drowsy voice mumbled.

Tapping into the inventory-menu, she located one well-functioning scout... glued to the base of the now-dead comlink-tower? That was odd. The operator hesitated to forward the result of her search, believing it was some sort of error.

"Really? Is little Derminea inside it?"

Thinking about it, Ursull now realized that she had forgotten to recollect her daughter after withdrawing from the Mantesians. Her mind had been busy elsewhere, but now that the resourceful little brat had managed to find them and grab hold on her own, Ursull found it odd that she had gone for a random spot on the roof rather than locking it to one of the airlocks and report to the bridge like any normal person would do.

"Scanning for identity-chips...Yes, positive match on Derminea Daak"

"Call her"

Several seconds passed.

"Not responding" The operator said.

"Hack in and activate inner camera"

All the files and codes they needed to remote-control the scout were stored in a program that could be unleashed at the touch of a button, making it no problem to fulfill the captain's wish.

"Done!"

Dermina appeared on the screen, and she was not alone. Something or someone was hiding beneath the stealth-blanket behind her. It tried to blend in with the brown duranium floor, but the many curls and curves in the surface gave it away. As it was now, it looked as if the floor was soft as half-molten butter, a thin membrane that was pushed upwards by something pressing against it from below.

"Hiding something, are we?" Ursull inquired.

"I..."

Derminea leaned her right elbow against the pilots-console while her left hand stroked nervously through her thick,black hair. She seemed stressed out.

"I need that scout, and I need a peak under that blanket" Ursull demanded with motherly authority.

"Activating other peoples cameras is just rude!" Dermina snapped at her, talking with shaky, high-pitched voice.

"So is bringing guests without the captains permission" Ursull pointed out.

Dermina had nothing to say against that, so instead she turned her head away from the camera.

"Its okay, you can come out now" She said sullenly towards the blanket.

A head popped out from its hind edge, Ursull recognized the face immediately, it was Dall`ek's pilot – the one that had been accompanying Dall`ek at their first meeting a few days back. He was not the most handsome bloke in the world, and Ursull found that timid, wry little smile that had appeared in his face annoying.

"So you have been fucking my daughter?" She asked him while pinning him down with a strict laser-gaze.

"Well, yeah, kind off" He said, looking as uncertain as it was possible for a Klingon to be.

"Kind off? Now that sounded pretty perverse. Park that scout properly and get lost, we will get back to this later"

Ursull signaled the operator to cut the transmission with a nonchalant hand-movement. When the idiotic youths were replaced by the forward hull-camera again, the stars had stopped moving.

"Are we close, or have warp failed on us?" She asked her navigator.

"Entering the heliosphere in thirty seconds, warp functional, but deactivated"

"Good, I'm heading for the airlocks, call me when we enter orbit"

Ursull got up from her seat and headed for the exit with long, hectic strides. Once out in the broad hallway, her concern for the wounded drew her towards the sickbay. Her closest family and friends among the clan had been up on the bridge with her during the disaster, everyone but Vook that was. One of the last things that ancient creature had said before leaving the bridge was that she wanted to die in honorable battle, and now it was a good chance her wish would be granted.

The last time Ursull had checked up on her, she was critically wounded, but stable. The heat-wave from the explosion had still been strong when it washed through the corridor adjunct to the ready-room were she was trying to reach the Defense League. The door had sealed itself shut, but the room was never the less heated up to intolerable levels, burning her badly before the cool-down system got control of the situation. It was fortunate that the cargo-bay itself had been vacant when the warhead blew, but it would have been even better if it had succeeded in containing the blast. The doors had not been strong enough, deadly firestorms had broken through and ravaged the lower levels before dying out. Now forty-nine dead clan-women lay dead in the freezer, and the sickbay was filled to the brink with wounded. Thinking about it made Ursull angry, but she tried to reconcile her self with the tragedy by telling her self that their casualties had not been in vain - that they would learn from the mistakes made, becoming stronger, better and smarter warriors.

All available floorspace in the sickbay was occupied by minimalistic beds made from thin aluminum rods. Upon them lay badly burnt Klingons, low moans of agony and the sharp smell of scorched flesh accompanied the depressing sight. The attending physician known as "Doc" went from bed to bed, inspecting the wounded with a concerned look on her face. Ursull stood in the doorway, observing Doc as she summoned two of the nurses for further instructions. One of them gave her a pad - most probably a patients journal - before returning to her previous task of tending the wound of an unconscious Klingon. There were volunteers as well, these did not wear the gray robes used by the professionals. Ursull's eyes let go of the doctor, instead wandered rapidly from bed to bed, trying to spot Vook within the mass of burnt flesh and hastily applied bandages. Her shockwhite mane should make her quite easy to single out, but she could not find her. Dead?

She entered the room, tip-toing her way through the narrow gap between two rows of beds. Doc did not notice her approach before she stopped beside her.

"What can I do for you captain?" She asked, looking up from the pad.

"Update on Vook's condition" Ursull demanded.

"Dead"

"Unfortunate, return to work"

Vook had been a good science-officer, and now she needed a new one. This ship would be passed directly to her brother after extensive repairs, so she would not return to its captains-seat for a while. The bird of prey that awaited her back home on the other hand... Old memories of Vook and the good times they had spent together flew through her brain, but Ursull tried to block them out, replacing them with plans and schemes for her upcoming adventure with her new vessel. It didn't work out. Images of Vook lighting up that huge and cozy fireplace in the dining-hall of the clan-castle, Ursull sitting on her lap, pulling her mane... It had been thick and black back then, but that was a long time ago. Perhaps she should not have been so strict on her during their mission? But at least she had died the death of a warrior. Vook had gotten that which she had come along for.

By the time Ursull arrived by the airlocks, the youngsters had already parked the scout and fled. Two green-glowing lights above the smallest hatch - the one at the end of the row - indicated that something was attached to it at the other side, and that it was safe to enter. Ursull walked up to it, revolving the manual handle at the center of the circular hatch. The locking-mechanism released with a loud click, pushing it outwards just enough to get a good grip around it's edges. The door was quite heavy, Ursull had to use every muscle in her body to get it open.

The interior of the scout was dark and empty. From her current position, there was a short drop of three meter down to the thick alumino-glass above the dead control-panel. The interior gravity-plating was off-line, so when she stepped over the edge she found herself floating freely within the narrow room. The airlock slammed itself shut with a big bang behind her, the room turned even darker now that it was sealed off from the bigger ship.

It felt good to release the scout and push away from the Clanship. Her destination was unique due to a very odd combination of traits. The conditions down there were so hospitable that one could explore the surface without a spacesuit, and yet there was no life. No plants, no animals, not even a single microbe was to be found. The researchers claimed that the only possible explanation for this, was that the sun was unstable - bathing the planet in extreme radiation every thousand year or so. But Klingons had not been around these parts of space for that long, so the theory had yet to be backed up by concrete observations.

"Observerpoint-33" - named after the only artificial structure erected on it's surface - was dominated by the khaki-colored stone that made up most of the surface. The hard ground was half-hidden beneath white clouds floating within its clear atmosphere. These clouds were reflected by the still and blue lakes that had gathered in the deepest canyons. It was a nice and quiet planet, and due to its complete lack of any useful resources, it was likely that it would stay that way forever.

Ursull was not in the mood for manual flight, so she feed her coordinates to the autopilot and leaned back in her seat. The barren and lifeless surface closed rapidly in on her, she dropped like a stone until the anti-grav engines kicked in. Her flightpath leveled out from steep dive, to a more easy-going angle of descent. The low humming could hardly be heard beneath the thundering roar of the hind-thrusters, who now had to work continuously to counter the increasingly dense air-resistance. Powerful winds shrugged the scout violently from side to side as it plunged through the upper atmosphere. Realizing that the turbulence had become somewhat brutal, the computer uttered an encouraging beep that was quickly accompanied by text and images in blinking green on the navigational monitor. What it basically said was that everything was under control, and going according to plan.

The landing-gear folded out just in time to ensure a soft touchdown upon the concrete-platting outside the humble entrance to the bunker that was Observerpoint 33. Kha-hutt was waiting for her, his eyes had tracked the scout on the final meters of its descent, and now he strolled slowly towards her. The hatch popped open, Ursull climbed up on the roof. The hull had heated up on its way down, she could feel the warmth radiate through the thick soles of her boots. The air was hot too. Still, hot - and perhaps a bit scarce on oxygen? Despite standing completely still, Ursull found it heavy to breathe.

Kha-hutt was the spitting image of what an old, male Klingon should look like. Tall, sturdy, solid in every meaning of the word. The only thing not stereotypical about the grizzled old warrior was the way he had allowed his voluminous white hair to tangle itself into thick dreadlocks that hung heavily against his shoulders, continuing down his muscular neck. The big man wore a solid looking chest-plate with a traditional Klingon pattern carved into it - excellent craftsmanship off course. He stretched out a huge hand wrapped within a thick leather glove. She grabbed it thankfully and used it for balance when jumping down to the concrete platting.

"Trouble I suspect?" The deep voice rumbled.

"You bet. I have a challenge for you" She said, looking up at him.

"Let's go inside, the air is thin today"

The heavy giant turned around, the layer of chainmail that he wore above his leather pants tinkled as he started walking. Ursull followed silently behind. Slowly, they traversed the unforgiving hardness of the concrete platting and the fatiguing air that surrounded it. And there was something wrong with the sun as well, Ursull felt as if her skin was pricked with a thousand small needles. The sensation was definitely uncomfortable, it made her glad that her face was the only exposed part of her body. Then - finally - they entered the relieving shadow beneath the bunker-entrance. An old and rusty elevator awaited them there. They entered and closed the door, Kha-hutt pressed the only button on its console. It shook and squeaked on its way down to the underground level.

A welcoming breeze of fresh and oxygen-rich air blew towards them when the door opened. Kha-hutt lead her gracefully towards the featureless, black and round table in the middle of the room. Having seated her carefully down at one of the minimalistic chairs that surrounded it, he walked around it and sat slowly down at the other end. Watching him move, Ursull came to fancy his gentlemanly softness, and how it contrasted his masculine heaviness in a way to enhanced both aspects of his personality.

The room was very similar to what they called "the war-room" on her own ship. It was in fact so similar that she theorized that it originally had belonged to a battle-cruiser of the same model as the Clanship, and that it had been beamed directly onto site once it had been dug out.

"Had you given me a call in advance, I would have warned you about the air. The sensors claim everything is good, but it can be quite a burden to move outdoors at times" Kha-hutt excused himself.

"I didn't see you with a spacesuit out there" Ursull answered.

"It is good to get in touch with the elements, feeling the soul of the planet on your skin, if you understand"

"I understand perfectly"

Feeling that it had been enough small-talk, Kha-hutt leaned his broad face over the table, staring at her with intense interest.

"So what brings you to my humble corner of Klingon space?" He growled with the energy of a man that was eager to help.

"Oh, its a mess really"

"Long time since I have seen one. Whose messing?"

"Mantesians, and natives who probably are backed by Humans"

"How many?"

"Our Clanship and a KDL-member, raptor-class bird of prey"

"Casualties?"

"At least fifty at our ship, unknown at the raptor"

"Where is the raptor now?"

"I ordered it to stay behind, it is observing planet number four from stealth-modus"

"Name"

"Uhhm... Dall`ek?"

"I was not asking for the name of the captain... but never mind"

Kha-hutt was clearly enjoying this. Digging into the situation, piecing together the puzzle, finding the source of the problem, choosing the best way to re-establish control - this was all routine to him, a routine that lifted his spirit. Now he banged the palm of his hand into the well-polished surface of the table, using it to push himself up from his chair.

"I was the one who ordered Dall`ek into these parts of space" He informed while moving towards the smooth darkness that surrounded them.

The room itself was a holographic projector, the continuous screen formed a glassy dome that curled around them. It was capable of displaying three-dimensional objects wherever they wanted them. Kha-hutt snapped his fingers, a list of names materialized before him, hovering in front of his considerable chest. Most Klingon males grew potbellies as they grew older, ending up with corpulent, pear-shaped bodies. Kha-hutt had managed to avoid this, the belly beneath his breast-plate was flat as an arrow. He was athletic in a heavy and robust kind of way.

"These are the KDL captains currently under my administration" He waved his hand over the lucid layer, causing it to scroll downwards.

"Here we have him, The Fist of Kahless, good track-record, that is why I sent him" He said while tapping into the ship in question.

"Lets give him a call, shall we?" Ursull suggested.

"My thoughts exactly"

Kha-hutt double-tapped an icon on the projection, making a square of the wall light up. The words "Establishing connection" pulsated beneath the three-spired symbol of the Klingon empire. The ship in question were less then ten light-years away, so it didn't take more than a few seconds for the two computers to establish a subspace-link. The face that greeted them on the other end was not that of Dall`ek, but one of his lesser minions.

"What can I do for you in this late hour?" The man grumbled.

"At my place it is broad daylight" Kha-hutt said, smiling.

Ursull had not kept track of time since their departure from the Nibulus-system, but the nightshift-guard was correct: The clock of standard space-time had passed midnight.

"Bring me the captain" Kha-hutt demanded.

The guard jumped up from his chair and made haste to the captains quarter. Dall`ek was summoned quite rapidly, perhaps a bit too rapidly. When he stumbled into the bridge, he looked disorientated and half-dead, with a gray tan on his skin, and a red one in his eyes. His nightly outfit was a furry gown made from several types of animal-skins that had been latched together. He made a full stop in front of his broad and deep pilot's seat, bowing deeply to show his respect for the general.

"Status?" Kha-hutt asked him.

"Holding orbit one A.U away from Nibulus four, stealth-modus"

"Any observations"

"Nothing new since I fell in"

"Actually sir.."

The second man on night-watch had something to say on the matter. He rose quickly from his chair and walked into the visual field of the camera, positioning himself beside the captain.

"A Starfleet-vessel have entered low orbit around Nibulus four, I was about to inform the others when you called"

"Ha! Now that is what I call good timing!" Kha-hutt threw his head backwards, chuckling merrily while looking towards the ceiling. His teeth were all sharp and big, but they had gotten a slight brown discoloring. Anything else would have been a sign of vanity, it was impossible to keep ones teeth naturally white forever - not on a Klingon diet anyway.

"Video!" He demanded when he had tilted his head back into its normal position, re-entering his general modus of efficient professionalism.

A live-stream video - probably filmed from a stealthed drone sent into orbit around the planet in question - popped up at a second screen beside the view of Dall`ek's bridge.

"Yack!"

Antiseptic, soulless and white-polished - Human ships were so, so... While Ursull struggled to find the right word to describe it, Kha-hutt tried to categorize it. The saucer-section was too big for a constitution-class standard-explorer, and the second most common starfleet ship-design - the Hermes class - had only a single warp-nacelle, so it was not that one either. The constellation series did not fit the bill, as it had two set of warp-nacelles - one pair above and one below the saucer-section. The bigger defense-class attack-cruisers had been ruled out right away, as the ship in question lacked the characteristic spoiler-shaped reserve-battery that powered their brutal phaser-arrays.

No other likely categories came to mind, so Kha-hutt shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

"We are dealing with a completely unknown ship-category here" He said.

"It might be..." The night-watch-man mumbled, not giving any further explanation before he returned to his seat.

"These must be the people who provide the natives with advanced weaponry" Dall`ek stated while nightwatch tapped away at his console, probably searching the most obscure depths of federation ship-categories. Then a spooky thought entered Dall`ek's mind, causing his blood to freeze:

"You don't want me to... I mean..?" He stumbled, with a scared look on his face.

"The Federation must know that we are brave, that we are willing to make sacrifices to stop them from violating our boarders" Kha-hutt said slowly.

The words latched on to Dall`ek like invisible weights, dragging him down.

"But Dall`ek have no shields, his ship is a complete wreck!" Ursull screamed in frustration.

"I have two more photon-torpedoes, that's it" Dall`ek whispered, knowing that Kha-hutt was seconds away from ordering him into certain death.

"Use the warp-core and the impulse combustion-chamber to make two more"

"No impulse, no warp" Dall`ek answered with low, flat voice - emotionless and yet apathetic.

"Thrusters?"

"I'm afraid so..."

"Then go get them!"

Knowing that it would be shameful to argue against a direct order, Dall`ek took a deep breath and straightened himself up. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but he had to do it. As a Klingon warrior, it was his duty to accept his destiny without bitching about it.

"It will be done!" He said with considerable force while clutching his hand and banging it against the heart-side of his chest. This was the traditional salute of the Klingon warrior-caste.

"Good luck" Ursull said meekly. Had she had the time to think something out, she would have found the words needed for a more epic farewell. As it was now, Kha-hutt did it for her:

"Be brave, be powerful, be merciless. - And your sacrifice to the empire shall not be forgotten!"

As the screen faded back to black, Ursull felt her heart sink deep into her chest. This was not how it was supposed to be! They were supposed to explore and plunder together, she at his side with her new raptor-class. But this...?

"Fuck you!" She suddenly screamed at the general. She felt a powerful urge to throw something at him, but there were no loose objects in the room.

"Principles my`lady - principles. We must all make our sacrifices" The general said coldly.

Heartbroken and furious, she ran for the elevator. Kha-hutt made no attempt to stop her, he had important work to do. All of the Klingon warships within his strip of space had to be gathered, should they ensure Klingon supremacy at Nibulus. It was his duty to make sure Dall`ek did not die in vain.

Ursull was less focused. A terrible rage had built up inside her, threatening to rip her apart from within. On her way up to the surface, she made the inner steel-wall of the elevator the focal-point of her steaming rage. It received so many blows that it bulged inwards upon arrival. Each blow sent waves of pain up her arms, but it didn't matter. One final blow ripped the metal apart, her hand continued forward, sinking into the softer concrete-wall behind it.

And still, she was angry. She retracted her bleeding hand, it created a thin path of pink blood behind her as she ran into the stinging sunshine. Everything felt so incredibly shitty, specially that nasty looking excuse for a sun. Patches of dark red floated above the dirty orange, and the thing wasn't even round. It's fast spin gave it an unappealing oblong shape – Yuck!

Her scout stood were she had parked it, but she hesitated to climb back in. It would be to surrender, would it not? She had to try harder before admitting defeat, and was she not an authority within the mighty Daak-clan? A captain of their biggest vessel? For some reason, she had forgotten about that while in the presence of Kha-hutt. Her mom was Gow Daak, a proud member of the high council - and she herself was an experienced warrior with numerous battles behind her. Together, they could stir up considerable problems for Kha-hutt... Slowly, she turned around, walking, then running back to the elevator.

The old general had foreseen this, there was no surprise in his eyes when he turned towards the sound of the opening door, finding her within the elevator.

"I was surprised you left so early" Kha-hutt said calmly.

Several ship-icons had appeared on the wall behind him, all of them birds of prey.

"I want you to call Dall`ek back"

"And if not?" He asked.

"If not the High Council will be turned against you" She threatened him.

"You do realize that you are talking to the only living Klingon general who have been awarded the emperor's black heart of outstanding bravery, do you not?" He said, a hint of pride beneath his unshakable calmness.

"I do"

"And Dall`ek should be proud of this opportunity, he will be an example for other captains to follow"

"I understand that" Ursull stepped out of the elevator, walking slowly towards him.

"And still...?" He wondered.

"And still. I don't know how, but we will make you suffer unless you retreat that order"

"I feel uneasy about giving special treatment based on well-connectedness, it will plant a seed of corruption into the warrior caste"

"I understand that"

"And still?" He repeated.

"His death will be pointless, it is better to wait for reinforcements"

"It is not the Klingon way to think in such manners"

Ursull stopped two meters away from him, the two Klingons stared at each other. Kha-hutt tried to measure her willpower through his gaze, her eyes did not wander. "Am I afraid of Gow Daak?" He asked himself. While looking deep into Ursull's eyes, he summoning the portrait of the strict old lady to his inner vision. The answer was clear: No, he was not. He was too old for that, to stubborn. And that - he told himself - was a good thing.

So the order stuck, and Dall`ek was not ordered to break off his attack. Conflicting emotions ebbed and flowed through him, battling to dominate his heart. Pride, sorrow, fear - mostly those three. The ancient Klingons believed that those who died in battle would enter Sto-vo-kor, the great and glorious hall of the dead. Here, the warnog beer would flow from mighty rivers, and the warrior would drink and fight each other to the end of time, reanimated by the ancient gods each and every morning. But the ancient Klingons had slain those gods, claiming that they were more trouble than they were worth. In the age of Kahless, warrior-pride and warrior-spirit were seen as values in them selves, not tools that could be used to reap rewards in the afterlife. Still, it would be good to have something to cling on to in the face of certain death. Those wise in scriptures had made it clear that to do without this reward made the brave warriors even braver, and that to die in glorious battle for emperor Kahless became an achievement even nobler than it had been under the ancient gods.

Other than his pilot Jaakh - who were nowhere to be found - His most trusted companions and crew-members were with him on the bridge. It was a silent and serious bridge, dense with emotions. The low hum of the thrusters brought the doomed ship slowly ahead, stopping when they had reached a speed of 200 kilometers a second. They were already inside the SUBDAR-range of the Human ship, but they would not be spotted as long as they kept their cloak.

"Entering orbit in five minutes" His navigation-officer Naq`Da said.

"I want to make this close and personal, bring us twenty kilometers ahead of the enemy" Dall`ek ordered.

"Will do"

"Arm torpedoes W"

"At maximum yield, it will take every drop of anti-matter we have. Shall I proceed?"

"Yes"

Meanwhile, Naq`Da had been running some tests and mathematical forecasts on his console:

"I must inform you, that our thrusters will have depleted our emergency-batteries upon establishing the position you required. But if we drop our cloak in four minutes, we might be able to push out of orbit"

"So if we live we will be dead in the water, right?" Dall`ek asked.

"Right"

"That sounds boring, so I hope we die. Are you with me comrades?"

They all laughed merrily.

Under normal circumstances, the challenge ahead would be no harder than that of the Enterprise, a ship they would have beaten, had they not been taken by surprise. But without shields? No chance in Gre`thor, that was the Klingon equivalent of Hell.

Orbit was established, The Fist of Kahless was pushed carefully into the desired position. The enemy grew big on their screen, it was basically a huge white saucer with small shining windows scattered unevenly along the vertical walls that separated the kilometer-long lids of duranium-plating from each other. Two warp-nacelles that ran parallel with each other grew out from a horizontal position behind it, they looked very short and thin compared to the mighty saucer. What did the Humans need all this interior space for? Dall`ek wondered. With a little skill, it was theoretically possible to scan them and find out without spooking them into activating the red-alert procedure in the process. But Dall`ek had no desire to do so. Shields, weaponry... He wanted it to be a surprise, he wanted his way to the grave to be as exciting as possible.

"Matching speed with target, holding relative position" Naq`Da informed him, taking a brief look towards the white-shimmering monstrosity on the main-screen before looking back down on his console.

"Prepare com-link" Dall`ek ordered.

What happened next, was a major turn-off - an anticlimax that would leave Dall`ek and his men breathless. Suddenly, the Human ship pushed upwards while rotating away from them! The unexpected move happened in a sudden jerk, and then the impulse-engines that stuck out from the saucer-section - between the warp-nacelles - were activated. The Fist of Kahless was given a gentle push by the dense burst of plasmatic alpha-radiation. When the wave cleared, they were hovering alone above the fat clouds of Nibulus 4. The Humans on the other hand, were rapidly accelerating to full impulse, their course set for the neutral zone.

"What the fuck!" Naq`Da screamed.

"Drop cloak, push us out orbit" Dall`ek ordered, relieved and puzzled.

They would live to fight another day.


	25. Chapter 25: Prospects

The skies were dark and stormy that night. Bright bolts of lightening flared up the thick and angry sky. When Jonas broke through the clouds, the howling wind was accompanied by the sound of heavy rain against the roof-top of his newly acquired vessel. It felt very good to have a proper spaceship again, not having to rely on those slow and noisy gasoline-driven machines that Yumaar used to get around.

The city of Thronar appeared as a beacon of light against the dark surface. As he came closer, it grew into a cluster of shining dots that was at its densest by the river-side, gradually thinning out as it stretched into the wilderness. The suburbia formed a pattern of lesser clusters that gradually transformed themselves into the same megablocks Jonas had spotted when first passing above the city in Yumaar's helicopter. In this late hour, the naked concrete walls formed ominous shadows who were only partly illuminated by the deep yellow glow of those few but huge windows that were built into them. Lines of luminous red marked the sharp boarder between wall and rooftop, telling airborne crafts were not to go. In this late hour, Jonas found the industrial landscape creepy and cold. - Even the royal helicopter-hangar would be cozy compared to this.

The dark silhouette of the castle main-tower rose skywards in front of him, it was barely distinguishable from the black backdrop. Jonas did as the keeper had instructed him, and aimed in on the green light at its center. This light marked a platform that grew out of the smooth and straight wall of the tower. As he got closer, a car-sized K`hmynian symbol lit up at its left edge. Jonas assumed that this was were he was supposed to land, and lowered his ship onto the complex maze of green-glowing lines that curved and twisted into each other. When the ship rested silent and still against the platform, it started to retract into the slot it had emerged from. The constant pounding ended as the ship was brought into the belly of the tower, away from the pouring rain.

It was time to get out, so Jonas loosened his safety-belt and walked into the little hallway behind the cockpit. Both air-lock-seals opened automatically as he stepped forward, entering the big garage. Other than his own ship, there were no other vehicles at the concrete-floor. Why? The answer could be found by a quick gaze towards the ceiling. The royal family had quite a collection of flying-machines, everything from small one-man helicopters that hardly weighed more than the pilot sitting in it, to long transporters with twin-rotors. What all of them had in common - other than being noisy and emitting foul gases when used - was that they were strapped to the ceiling with sturdy wires. An empty spot had been cleared for the newcomer directly above its current position. If he stayed here for a while, a team of royal servants would emerge from the exit at the far end of the garage. They would tie up his ship and raise it into the empty spot, that way making sure the floor remained free.

But Yumaar was missing, so Jonas retreated back to the recreation-room of his vessel. It felt nice to have a proper spaceship again, one with separate quarters instead of that hyper-social Hoognok layout were the functions of recreation-room, dormitory and kitchen had been merged into the same boarder-less and privacy-deprived context. Since they had built that creature out of Zin's flying garbage-can and Jonas welded F-class ships, its weirdness-level was as high as it could possibly get within starfleet. The new ship was not remotely close to that kind of originality, but it could never the less be described as a rarity. The Journeyman-class were few in numbers, and the Journeyman Conveyor was probably the smallest branch of that tree. The captain of the ambassador-ship had been very reluctant to give it away, and Jonas could understand that. Most probably, starfleet would just dump a bunch of F-class shuttles on them for compensation - they made way too many of those.

Jonas fell into the gray-coated sofa, enjoying the relaxed - Human - colors of the recreation-room. There were no aggressive red or screaming yellow here, nothing that made his eyes hurt. The atmosphere was a bit hard and professional though, Jonas would for example have loved to switch the industrial-looking steel-table in front of him for a more snug-looking wooden one. Even though it was of a boring design, the sofa was very soft and comfortable. He laid down on it and stretched out.

Yumaar arrived eventually, Jonas was summoned to the airlocks by the sound of his communicator beeping. A broad smile awaited him on the other side. Like all other K`hmynians, Yumaar had bright yellow teeth that formed a stark contrast to the blue color of their skin.

"New ride I see" The prince said.

"Neat, don't you agree?" Jonas answered.

Jonas invited him inside with a friendly gesture, Yumaar followed behind as he headed back towards the living-room.

"So whose left?" Yumaar asked as they cornered the first junction of the corridor leading there.

"Carolyn and Jeff took a hike with the ambassador-ship, that leaves me and Zin"

"They are going back to the Enterprise, right?" Yumaar assumed.

"Jupp, out and away to new and unmapped corners of space"

"Sounds cool"

"It is, every cadet of starfleet dreams about participating on these kinds of missions"

Yumaar remained standing while Jonas reseated himself in the sofa.

"Let's take a look at the cockpit" He suggested.

"No drinks from the synthesizer?" Jonas asked while pointing towards the open kitchen-door.

The Journeyman Conveyor was outfitted with four synthesizers that were as top-notch as they were voluminous. Each one of them was specialized for a specific type of food. One was for liquids, one for meat, one for vegetables and fruits, and a fourth one that Jonas had not yet found the time to look into. The result was tasty food, almost as good as the natural variety.

But Yumaar was not interested in any of this. Instead he dragged Jonas along to the cockpit, urging him to activate it.

"I will, I will" Jonas promised, immediately adding a condition to that promise:

"But first you will have to tell me something"

"Spit it out!" Yumaar said, eager to see the instruments of the black console-table light up.

He had been curious about them back on the Hidden Explorer as well. Jonas remembered vividly how he had hung over his shoulder for the entire trip back from Nibulus 6, following each and every command Jonas tapped into it with keen eyes.

"The Ferengies, update please" Jonas requested.

"Aha, certainly. We have interrogated some of them, and they all claim that they broke free due to a power-failure in the Klingon ship. Then they overwhelmed the guards with their superior numbers, stole their weapons and fought their way to the teleporter-room while the ship was falling to pieces around them"

"But why did they beam down to your castle?" Jonas asked, puzzled.

"That seems to be a mystery to them as well. They claim not to have had the time needed to check the coordinates it was set for, so they just walked in and squeezed the button."

"But the Klingons had no reason to aim for you! The warhead was fired by the western Kingdom, and the golden decoy was set up on their lands!" Jonas argued.

"I guess we will never find out for sure, will we" Yumaar said, shrugging his shoulders.

"So what will you do with them?" Jonas was curious to know.

"Well, their captain set me up and tried to kill me, so I returned the favor - with greater success I might add. The rest are live and kicking, and they have promised to build me a warp-drive as long as I use it to drop them off at Ferenginar"

"An eye for an eye, eh?" Jonas commented, skeptical furrows popping up in his forehead and around his eyes.

Within Starfleet, the death-penalty had been abolished in all but the most backward planets, and it was generally viewed upon as a barbaric and obsolete practice.

"Oh come on! You never kill anyone in that empire of yours?" Yumaar shouted at him, frustrated by the very thought of not being able to use this tool.

"Sure we do, Klingons and Romulans drop every day - but only in battle"

Yumaar sighed. His numerous talks with Jonas had revealed a complexity and lack of straightforwardness within Human society that he found annoying. The Federation was an empire, but with equal formal rights to all its citizens. Humans dominated all aspects of policy-creation, but they were not officially in charge. The empire was going through a period of rapid expansion, but it was not - according to itself - an aggressive super-power. They wanted peace with the Romulans and Klingons, but they never the less ended up in armed boarder-conflicts against them on a daily basis. All these double-standards and mixed messages made Yumaar's head hurt, so it was perhaps a good thing that their sun was heading out of their grasp. Too bad these Klingons had made such a lousy first-impression...

"Anyway, should we not head for Nibulus 6 and pick up those friends of yours?" Jonas proposed.

"Snowball you mean? Sure, but first I want to go for a spin in your new plane. Objections?"

"None. Perhaps you can give me a tour of your kingdom? Ill hand you the controls as soon as we clear the city"

Yumaar was not surprisingly, thrilled by the idea. A minute later they were souring into the dark night, heading away from the artificial city-lights. The mega-blocks passed rapidly beneath them, giving way to a flat and featureless landscape. Actually they were flying above the most cultivated farmlands in the kingdom, but at nighttime the fields and farm-houses were concealed by darkness. Only a broad highway could be seen, it formed a shining path towards another big city.

"Okay, give me the controls!" Yumaar nagged while pulling Jonas by the khaki-colored shirt of his uniform.

"Moment" Jonas reassured him.

Like most other warp-capable civilizations, starfleet had abandoned joysticks and steering-wheels in favor of touch-sensitive controls. A million different touch-boards could be brought up to the panel, but only four were needed for basic handling: XY-axis, Z-axis, tilt-screen, and local-area map - or "Lam" in starfleet-jargon. To Jonas all this was easy as pie, he had after all spent years of his life learning to master it. But for Yumaar? - It would be interesting to watch him figure it out. Just to be certain, Jonas activated a few emergency-protocols before stripping the area in front of the pilots-seat of all non-essential screens. As it was now, the ship would automatically go to full stop if they went within fifty meters of the ground, or some other obstacle.

"This is going to be completely different from flying a plane or a helicopter. The craft will do exactly what you want it to do, you will be surprised how precise it is" Jonas explained while switching to the co-pilot's seat .

Yumaar sat down, his index-finger reached carefully towards the forward-pointing arrow of the XY-axis.

"If you push it, the craft will start to accelerate. When you let go it will maintain the speed given" Jonas informed him.

"Its quite dark around these parts, but if we go north it will get brighter" Yumaar answered, his finger resting above the arrow.

"Please do, if you look at the map you will spot a compass at its upper left corner"

Yumaar managed to turn the ship about without further instructions. He accelerating the ship until waves of soft vibrations rippled through the hull, then he let go. Meanwhile, Jonas was busy summoning the radar-map up to his side of the panel. He felt it would be irresponsible not to keep track of planes and helicopters in the area.

"How fast are we going now?" Yumaar wondered, not being able to read the Human number-display that was positioned above the arrows.

"Seven thousand and fifty-five kilometers an hour" Jonas said after a brief look on Yumaar's display.

When the translator-plug in Yumaar's ear was done spitting Jonas words out in his native tongue, the prince looked mightily impressed.

"Shouldn't we have been squeezed into pancakes?" He asked after a brief pause of thinking. It had taken them less than a minute to reach this velocity, so it was a logical question.

"The dampening-field creates a physic-free bubble around us" Jonas explained.

Now that they had turned away from the highway, they had no exterior source of light what so ever. All the cameras had been deactivated in order to not confuse Yumaar, so the view ahead - or lack of it - gave them no impression of forward momentum. Yumaar looked a bit bored, but Jonas figured his face would light up with joy again when they saw daylight. As it was now, the windshield looked as if they were resting within a pool of black paint.

"I want to take a look above the clouds" Yumaar decided.

"Just use the tilt-screen to switch angle"

Thousands of twinkling stars popped up as they traversed the thick lid that had concealed them. By the time Yumaar leveled out the ship again, they were flying within the ozone-rich, top-level of the atmosphere. At this height the air was so thin that the thrusters could shut down almost completely without loosing speed. The low humming from the back disappeared as it got too low and deep to be heard by Human ears. But what about K`hmynian ones?

"Can you still hear the engines?" Jonas asked.

"Nope"

A few minutes later, the top of the mighty Nibulus sun popped up from its hiding-place beyond the horizon. It was as massive as it was angry, a frightening sight that would have left them with serious sun-burns within minutes, had the computer not been considerate enough to dim down the windscreen. The heavy star continued to rise, but it was no danger now that it had been reduced from a fierce looking ball of deadly fire, into a civilized and artificial semi-circle of dark-red. A brief look at the map told Yumaar that they were getting closer to the northern boarder of the Kingdom, so he turned the snout downwards, diving back into the protective shell of vapor.

A brighter and colder scenery awaited them on the other side. It was a hostile wilderness of sharp and steep mountains - ice, snow and rock.

"This used to be a separate kingdom" Yumaar said.

"Oh?"

"I was gradually integrated into ours during early industrialization. It turned out we had all the crude oil on our side, so it became impossible to maintain independence" He continued.

"On Earth we depleted our reserves of fossil fuels a long time ago. How much do you have left?" Jonas wondered.

"None, we run on alcohol made from bacterias who feed on wood from the mega-mushrooms. It's kind of expensive, so we can't waste as much as we did before" The prince explained.

"Well, if you invent fusion-power and efficient fuel-cells, you can start wasting again. The best thing is to have an exterior source of hydrogen though, there are civilizations out there who have split and fused-up their entire water-supply" Jonas told him.

"I think you should give it to us" Yumaar proposed, ever hopefully.

"We have had this discussion before" Jonas answered brusquely.

He could understand Yumaar's position, but did he have to repeat himself over and over again?

The prince respected Jonas wish to not repeat himself, so instead of talking he aimed in on a frozen and gusty looking plateau that stuck out from the base of the mightiest mountain in sight. Landing the vessel was beyond Yumaar's fast-learned abilities, so he brought the ship to a full stop before they switched seats.

Having carefully brought the ship down, Yumaar and Jonas simultaneously spotted an interesting looking figure below them. At the bottom of the long and steep downhill-slope that started just below the plateau, a sturdy and robust looking K`hmynian was herding a flock of very woolen animals. They too, were robust and sturdy - not at all like the sheep Jonas was used to on Earth.

"The locals are quite interesting around these parts, care to zoom in on him?" Yumaar suggested.

"Can do"

Yumaar was correct, - it was all very... interesting. The outfit bore no resemblance to anything Jonas had seen before, so it was hard to describe - other than that it looked very warm, and that it was colorful. The animals were a different story. Was that beaks he saw? The flat and long mouths below their black and big eyes? Beaks with sharp teeth? Jonas zoomed in further to get more details. The carnivore, fish-like heads of those animals didn't match the more sheep-like bodies at all.

Jonas asked Yumaar about it:

"They are adapted to dig into the snow and drag up frozen roots and plants. Everything under the snow is deep-frozen, so they need jagged teeth to chew it"

Meanwhile, the odd-looking K`hmynian halted. Having made a dead-stop, his upper body turned towards them while his feet sank deeper into the snow.

"Do you think he have spotted us?" Jonas wondered.

They were several kilometers away, and their white hull should blend in nicely with their surroundings. Still...

"Crap! He's taking up a mobile-camera!" Yumaar screamed, sounding like it was the end of the world.

Jonas didn't quite understand why it was such a big deal, so he sent Yumaar a quizzical look before returning his attention to the monitor. The shepherd had fetched a hand-sized gadget from within his huge and traditional looking overall. It had a camera-lens built into its upper part, filming it would seem, in their general direction.

"Why the fuzz?" Jonas asked his companion.

"Make us invisible! Dim down the windshield! Do something!"

Yumaar was completely frantic, so Jonas quickly switched the windshield from transparent to reflective modus, that way making it impossible for outsiders to look in. The view got darker again, it was comparable to taking a pair of shades on.

"Now you explain" He demanded when done.

"Officially, there are no aliens on K`hmary, no Ferengies, no Klingons, no Humans" Yumaar mumbled while sinking down in his seat, as if he was trying to hide from the camera. He seemed shaky and stressed out.

"Really? But what about the Klingon attack?" Jonas wondered.

"The official story is that our planet passed through an asteroid-field, all three kingdoms have worked hard to hide the fact that most of the losses were military"

Jonas fell back in his seat, thinking hard on the new info while looking at the shepherd with the camera. After a few more seconds of filming, he seemed to have gotten bored by the activity. He tapped a few commands into the display at the other side of the lens, probably storing and shutting it down. Then he put it back into the inner pocket of his coat. For a split second, he hesitated. Should he walk away or investigate? He landed on the boldest of the two options, making his way through the deep snow with long strides.

"He's heading our way" Jonas stated flatly, watching as his flock of...oddities fell into line behind him.

"Are we invisible?" Yumaar asked.

"No, only Klingons can do that. But I dimmed down the windshield, like you requested"

This put Yumaar in a stale-mate of sorts. Jonas understood what went through his mind, as he lowered his eyebrows and looked down on his knees with a worried expression on his face. If they made a run for it, the shepherd would get a more impressive video to show off, and if they remained parked, they might be stuck for a while. He would probably spend hours looking for a way in, and it would be impossible to lift off without hurting him. He might even call his friends, and then they would suddenly be the center-piece of some sort of shepherd-style mountain-gathering, all kinds of idiots trying to bust their door in with their primitive and feeble tools. They would undoubtedly fail to cut through the duranium, but they would inflict ugly wounds upon the polish while trying. And the longer they stuck around, the grander their departure would become... No, noway! Not going to happen!

"We are splitting!" Jonas decided

"But!..." Yumaar tried to protest

"No but. My ship" Jonas cut him off

The ship lifted up and away in a sudden move, rapidly elevating itself into the protective cover of clouds. When their view-screen was clogged by impenetrable grayness yet again, Jonas made a full stop. At this altitude the clouds were like a fast moving stream, they were immediately swept away by the howling current, picking up speed as they drifted above the land.

"If that dude had a internet-connection, your cover is busted" Jonas said, trying to suppress a wry smile.

Why was it funny? He could not tell for sure, but the idea of Yumaar and his fat dad trying desperately to cover up their increasingly intimate collaboration with no less than three different alien species...

This stuff had the potential to become a hilarious sit-com.

"I'm afraid you are right, a few more incidents like this, and we will be in deep shit. You don't suppose we can go back and kill him?" Yumaar said bluntly, displaying the more bloodthirsty side of his character for the second time that day.

Jonas asked himself whether or not to get angry at the prince for having such a liberal attitude to murder. Keeping cultural differences in mind, as well as the potential integrity-loss for the royal family, should their lies be busted... No point. And besides: Perhaps a Starfleet-general would react similar in the face of gigantic top-secret stuff getting spoiled?

"Not on my watch." He answered calmly.

"And if he have streamed that film to the web, it will just make it worse" He then pointed out.

The ship shrugged gently from side to side, as the wind carried them towards the south-east shores of the kingdom. As long as the anti-grav generator was running, they were like a weightless balloon with no will of its own. Jonas loved floating around like that, back at the academy he had used every opportunity to do so. It would have been even better with a proper view though...

He activated the scanners needed for the job, and started a broad sweep of the kilometers ahead of them, assuring himself that the fog stayed dense. Meanwhile, Yumaar had conjured up an idea:

"You know, I think we should park this vessel someplace safe, and keep it there for the time being. Perhaps we can fuse it with the new ship once those Ferengies are done building the warp-drive?" He suggested.

"Had I knew our presence here was secret, I would never have used it for atmospheric flight. I say we make a new base for our self at the building-site for your new ship" Jonas agreed.

Jonas turned the ship about, ascended above the clouds, and set course for a region that Yumaar referred to as "the Shintoi drylands". This wast dessert engulfed much of the central area of the continent. It could perhaps be compared to the Midwest in the US, or the Gobi-desert in China. There were no mountains there that could slow down the clouds, so they preferred to blow past it without shedding any rain.

The military base they were heading for had been reduced to a scorched crater during the Klingon bombardment, but a improvised cluster of tents had been put together on the other side of the runway. A tall and equally improvised electrical fence had been erected around it, it was made to hold the Ferengies in place when not working on the warp-drive.

"If you plan to lock us up with those Ferengies, you must think again" Jonas warned while nodding towards the encampment.

"No worries, I will set up a luxury-hotel for you right away" Yumaar promised.

"Good idea, you need good quarters for your own researchers as well. You should try to make them work together with the Ferengies, make sure they suck in as much knowledge as possible"

The only plane that stood parked at the end of the runway was a green carrier with very long wings. Yumaar pointed towards it, asking Jonas to land beside it. Right after touchdown, Zin called on the hand-held communicator.

"Jonas here" He said.

"I have just finished the complete works of Aristotle, and now I am boring my ass off. What are you up to?" Zin wondered.

"Human philosophy is pretty heavy, don't you agree?" Jonas opined

"I figured I have to get in touch with your stuff, working in starfleet and all. But Kant is better, more in line with Bolian thinking" Zin answered.

"Pretty dated in my opinion. If you want to dig into the soul of starfleet, you should first read up on John Stuart Mill and the other utilitarians, and then read the teachings of logic by Surak, see how it melds together. If still in the mood for reading when done, you can round it off with some Marx and Engels" Jonas recommended.

"Even though Surak was Vulcan?" Zin pointed out.

"Keep in mind, that Starfleet is built on the backs of Vulcan advisors"

Yumaar was not in the mood for this. He tapped his fingernails restlessly against the armrests of his seat, trying to get Jonas attention.

"Anyway, Yumaar wants to relocate us to the building-site for the new ship. Care to beam over?" Jonas asked, bringing them back on track.

"Ill be happy to, I feel I have been left out of all the action lately"

"Okay, I am locking on to your communicator, prepare for transfer"

Jonas did as he said he would do, and a few computer-beeps later, the gentle humming of the transporter reached them from beyond the recreation-room. It was odd really, how easy the sound traveled between the rooms. What were the walls made off, cardboard? Once Zin was successfully re-assembled, Jonas rose from his chair and walked out of the cockpit. Yumaar followed closely behind as he stepped into the recreation-room. This was the central hub of the ship, all the other rooms were linked to it through the same feature-less and gray slide-door that starfleet filled all their ships with. Jonas did not yet know this ship as his own pocket, in fact there were rooms here that he had not even visited. It was a good thing then, that the main function of the rooms at the other side were stamped into the doors with thick, black letters.

Storage was on the inner left, just behind the TV. Then came the kitchen with the specialized synthesizers. The engine-room started behind the dining-table and the chairs that were screwed stuck to the fake mahogany-floor. Then came the weapons-chamber, a highly original feature for such a small ship. Their modest phaser-bank was very accessible for repairs, but the downside was that it was bolted to the floor in the same manner as their furniture. The chamber was not big enough to install a flexible platform, so the constructors had just carved a hole in the outer hull were the exit-lens was. Should they ever need to aim in on a target, the entire ship had to shift angle. It went almost without saying that the journeyman would be rubbish in a fight, but it was good to have something against asteroids and space-dwelling organisms. At the inner right wall, there was a door marked "holodeck", the hottest and trendiest thing within starfleet. The holodeck could project three-dimensional images anywhere in the room, a good tool for displaying complex information such as star-charts and schematics. The next door, Jonas had yet to open. It was marked "computer-core" and it was most probably a small and cramped little room were the various hard-discs could be inserted and removed from slots in the wall and ceiling. Next up came the exercise-room. Jonas had not yet been there, but the inventory-list claimed it was equipped with a thread-mill, a rowing-machine, and some other boring stuff designed to drain ones energy should one ever manage to build up a surplus. The entrance to the transporter-room was actually the closest door to the bridge-corridor they had emerged from. Had Jonas started looking over his right shoulder rather than his left, he would have spotted it right away.

Just as Jonas found the right door, it slided open. Zin passed through it, making a quick spin around his axis before spotting Yumaar and Jonas.

"Nice place you have here" He said smiling.

Jonas came up to him, they shook hands.

"We will be staying here for quite some time, starfleet wants us to oversee the construction of Yumaar's next explorer" He informed.

"Really? That sounds like a fun task. Have your engineers made any drawings yet?" Zin asked, looking down on Yumaar.

"Not that I know of, our negotiations with the Ferengies was not concluded before yesterday evening, so this is fresh news"

Zin's face lighted up, as if he had just received a gift he really yearned for.

"I can't wait to begin, were is the holodeck?" He screamed, eager as a child.

More work awaited them, Jonas led the way.


	26. Chapter 26: To boldly go

One year had passed since the Ambassador-ship left with Carolyn and the K`hmynian delegation. It had been a boring year, a year of sand, silence, and dusty winds. When not being bored, Jonas and Zin had worked together with the research-team of the Northern Kingdom, doing their very best to help them build a efficient and functional spaceship. The Ferengi slaves had been working too, but they lacked the materials needed to craft a truly efficient warp-drive. Propulsion would be slow, it would take several years to reach Ferenginar. In reality, the ship-design they had ended up with was too small for such a long trek. Budgets were limited, even when all three kingdoms collaborated on the project. Jonas missed the sight of other Humans, for here there was none. The closest thing he had to a Human companion on this planet was actually Zin. During the time they had spent together helping out the K`hmynians, Jonas had found out that he had some very odd ideas on everything from food to music to politics - but that was to be expected from an alien.

To begin with, both Jonas and Zin thought their suggestions within ship-design and interior layout would be taken into account, but Yumaar and his scientists had developed ideas of their own already at the beginning of the project, and they had proven to be very stubborn about them. In other words, Jonas had not played the key-role that he had imagined. Never the less, he still felt wholeheartedly that their work here gave a positive contribution to K`hmynian civilization, a civilization that soon would find itself face to face with a ruthless and deadly enemy. Jonas had expected the Klingons to arrive sooner, that there would not be enough time to prepare. Then weeks had turned into months, and months had turned into seasons - still no Klingons. The only efficient ground-to-space weapon they had in their arsenal was the nadium-enriched laser-cannon used by the southern kingdom during the first bombardement. It had taken a lot of convincing to make them share this technology with the other kings, but they had gotten their way eventually. Now - one year later - a dense pattern of huge laser-towers had been erected across the globe. The masses off course, believed this tremendous effort was made in order to evaporate an incoming meteor-storm before it reached the atmosphere. Jonas took pride in knowing that the planet they were about to leave behind was capable of fending off a full-scale Klingon attack. It had to be mentioned though, that it had lead to a total militarization of the K`hmynian economy, and that all three kingdoms had been brought to the brink of financial collapse.

Compared to those ugly towers, the fruits of their labor here was very charming. The space-agencies of the three kingdoms had after lengthy deliberation landed on the name "Koroman Ladder", a name extracted from some ancient fairy-tale they had in common. The Koroman Ladder was a winged vessel that was part plane, part spaceship. The wings and front-section was covered by a layer of nano-tech uptake-filters that channeled oxygen from the air into the combustion-chamber of the primitive hydrogen-burner at the back. This highly original piece of technology allowed the vessel to climb up to a height of twenty kilometers before the oxygen-tank had to plugged in to compensate for the thin air. Two fresh tanks of hydrogen and oxygen awaited them in orbit, together with a completely different propulsion-system that was more suitable for the vacuum of space. What the Koroman Ladder lacked was a proper shuttle-craft that could get people on and off the surface of planets. Jonas and Zin had proposed to solve this problem by expanding the responsibility of their original mission into the K`hmynian venture, taking the Journeyman along with them. Starfleet was uncertain, undoubtedly still pondering long and hard upon the pros & cons of that suggestion.

Meanwhile, Jonas had been busy with a different project. These were turbulent times for the Kingdoms of K`hmary, and Starfleet wanted regular updates on the political situation. So far he had depended heavily upon Yumaar and his science-crew to stay updated on local events. The K`hmynian internet was programmed in a way that made it very hard to squeeze it through the translator-program of his pad. It was a shame really, that the coding was cracked just before departure. But here - finally - it was: K`hmynian internet with English language and Roman letters. So what did it have to tell him?

Jonas typed in the first name of a list of newspapers he wanted to go through, scrolling rapidly through the headlines.

**Chamber of ministers denies contact with alien lifeforms on official level**

Uhu... That was not the best front-page Yumaar could have hoped for, and those ministers looked stressed out and scared, surrounded as they were by a crowd of journalists that looked more like a pack of hungry wolves. Jonas scrolled past the main text, jumping directly to the next headline:

**Royal negotiations ends with deal for nuclear disarmament between all three kingdoms**

A lot better, but the road to peace was filled with long and complex words written in tiny letters. Jonas skipped all of them, going directly for the next headline:

**Website specialized on UFO-conspiracy-theories closed by Sec-Top taskforce, owner charged with conspiracy against the King**

So the snowball was indeed rolling, getting bigger and heavier on its way down the mountain. One thing was the Journeyman, who had been spotted all over the kingdom on that faithful trip one year earlier, the other was all those servants and public officials who had leaked confidential stuff about their existence to the press. Jonas sighed, dwelling on the headline for a few seconds before jumping to the next:

**Elite university-group questions official story behind last years meteor shower**

Okay... So Yumaar was fucked, on several levels that was. The next headline was even worse:

**Prince Yumaar marries today! Join the festivities! See the colors! Carnival in Thronar! **

Angry press, suspicious investigators closing in on him from several different angles, hideous girlfriend forced on him by dictator-dad. And still: a flicker of light shone a narrow path through these dark and desperate times. His ship was ready, but would he grasp the lifebuoy they had made for him? Or would he stay on the surface, boldly facing the challenges ahead?

Jonas turned off his pad and put it face down on the desk. He was sitting within the captains ready-room, a small retreat normally reserved - as the name implied - for the captain. Jonas was not the captain on this ship, he was not supposed to be there. Within Starfleet-vessels, micro-chips sewed into the uniforms worked as keys who denied those without the right uniforms access. Yumaar however, had insisted on a more tech-free environment, and he had made the space-agencies listen to his ideas. The interior of the ship mimicked that of an ancient submarine, right down to the manual doors. All of them were built to block fires and explosions when shut, so it took a lot of force to push them open. It was a good thing they closes them selves though, they were built with a slightly slanted angle that made gravity do the job. Had it been up to Yumaar, they would have dropped that one too - it was his own scientists that had insisted on gravity-plating.

On his way to the bridge, Jonas passed through the cramped bunks were the K`hmynian crew dwelled. The one for the crew came first, then the one for the bridge-officers. There were eight of each category, so the rooms each held the same number of beds. They were organized into two stacks of four at both sides of the pathway. - Could things get any more minimalistic? Jonas treasured what little privacy he had, so it was a good thing the shuttle-bay on the floor above had space enough to carry the Journeyman within it. Yumaar had another lander ready, but it would never the less be bad news if starfleet took it away from them. The K`hmynian vessel used the same type of primitive hydrogen-oxygen burner that the mothership used to reach orbit, so it would deplete its fuel-supply on a single trip to a 1-G surface. Their ability to explore would be very limited, to say the least.

D`Jumo - one of the nobels who had joined Yumaar on his trip to Nibulus 6 - was the only man on the bridge when Jonas entered.

"Turn on the TV, will you?" Jonas asked D`Jumo.

His little blue hands pushed through a few menus in rapid succession. A moving picture materialized in front of the dessert runway, gradually densifying until it blocked the view completely. At the upper right corner, four dense and thick K`hmynian letters could be seen. Jonas thought it looked a bit like Sanskrit, it had the same types of loops and curves. He understood neither off course, but Yumaar had told him that the four letter-logo was a abridgment for "Northern Royal Broadcasting Service" - whatever that might sound like in Northern K`hmynian.

"This is the Xlux-temple in the capital" D`Jumo told him, pointing at the image displayed.

The word "Xlux" might have had some meaning, but the translator failed to convey it, so it slipped by the earplug unprocessed. It would off course have been best to learn proper K`hmynian rather than to always rely on the computer-generated sounds of the earplug. Unfortunately, Jonas knew even before trying that he lacked the patience and interest needed to do so. If anyone, Carolyn should return with a anthropology-crew one day and put K`hmynian culture and language under the magnifying-glass. Jonas imagined that she would go about it with intense devotion and great skill, it was a pity for anthropology that Kirk had demanded her return to the Enterprise. To take a more positive outlook, Jonas was very happy that he had been able to maintain contact with her on subspace. The Enterprise was still going strong on it's five-year mission of exploration, jumping from one action-filled adventure to the next. Among the more noteworthy, Carolyn had encountered both a million year old robot, and a powerful entity that claimed it was a Greek god named "Adonais". Jonas felt honored to be given a peak into these events before everyone else. The complete logs of exploration-missions like that of the Enterprise was as a rule not opened to the public before several years after completion, and rumors said that starfleet edited away anything sensitive.

"Looks good" Jonas replied, about a minute after D`Jumo had told him the name of the temple. His mind had been clogged with Carolyn, Enterprise, and a dozen other topics.

The camera filming the event made a sweep across the temple-floor from its elevated position. A huge crowd had gathered there, and everyone wore their best and most formal clothing. It was pretty chaotic compared to the churches Jonas was used to at home. Back there, everybody were sitting quietly in orderly rows of forward-pointing benches, like in a lecture-hall or before a shuttle-launch. This seemed more like a market place, main difference being that there were no stands,

"So where is the bride?" Jonas wondered.

"She's not a pretty sight, if that's what you are wondering about" D`Jumo warned.

"Yumaar have told me a million times already, unfortunately I have been to buried in work to check it up my self"

Jonas paid attention to the screen as it zoomed in on the guests. Most of them were northern nobles, but there were also some representatives from the higher strata of the commercial classes present. Back on Earth it could be difficult to spot a persons status without talking to him, but here on K`hmary, each of the main social classes and their numerous sub-divisions had their own unique dress-code with outfits for both weekdays and festivities. The system of garments, shapes and patterns that they had evolved was very well-ordered, and yet it was not easy to grasp for a foreigner. What he had understood, was that in events like this, northern Nobles always wore single-colored tunics in a fine silk-like material. The color was up to their personal choosing, so the possibility to express personal taste was bigger than for most of the other classes.

Then the image shifted to a different angle, much closer to the ground. From this new position, one could see into the cave-like extension that was dug into the wall at the end of the hall. The cave-entrance started by a platform that stood two meters up from the main floor, so the camera still overlooked the sea of babbling blue heads with good margin. The lofty interior was filled with the sound of K`hmynian chattering, and the temple itself increased it by trapping the exotic sounds, making them bounce back and forth between the massive walls. Both nobles and merchants it seemed, had a lot to talk about. Being of religious origin, the elegant wall-paintings on the walls portrayed various events and characters from those stories within K`hmynian folklore who involved gods and demons. None of the images were familiar to Jonas, and this reminded him about just how lazy he had been when it came to study K`hmynian culture.

The camera zoomed in on two K`hmynians silhouettes who had appeared within the dim shaft that stretched into the cave-like funnel. They were heading towards the open hall, gradually becoming more illuminated as they stepped towards the platform. Jonas had a strong hunch about who those two were. The one on the right side was definitely female, now that they had come a bit closer one could clearly see her feminine curves. Those didn't look too bad, not too bad at all - not to Human eyes anyway. This observation only served to make Jonas even was curious, because according to Yumaar she was the ugliest woman in the universe. As the silhouettes continued their approach towards the platform, more details became visible. The wife - Amblenia, wasn't that her name? - had a large fluffy skirt that ended in a more body-tight blouse above her round hips. Yumaar wore the same type of tunic as most of the guests did, main difference being that it had a rather dense and complicated pattern woven into it. But it was still too dark to see their faces... Jonas leaned forward in his chair, eagerly anticipating the moment were they walked into the revealing light. The moment arrived, and it was not a pretty sight.

"God damn! She's ugly!"

Stunningly, shockingly, extremely, ridiculously... Hideous. Words could not really describe how the overgrown jaw, the sharp, outstanding chin, the long, bumpy nose, the weirdly deformed forehead, the thin, wispy hair... All of it acted together in a perfect disharmony were each negative trait amplified the other. The one positive attribute the soon-to-be-princess did have, was that she looked rather happy. Her chapped lips formed a crooked smile, and her sunken eyes radiating with joy.

"Does it go in the family, this appearance?" Jonas whispered, amazed and scared by the scarecrow on the screen.

"I Don't know really, I have never been acquainted with the Zipowes" D`Jumo replied, more puzzled than appalled by the view.

"Because if it does, I have a thing or two to teach you K`hmynians about inbreeding" Jonas said between two deep breaths.

"Don't underestimate us!" D`Jumo snapped back, obviously offended by the notion of them not understanding basic biology.

"Only joking" Jonas hastily replied, eager to repair the damage.

"Apology accepted" D`Jumo responded, still sounding angry.

As the priest, shaman, templar - whatever they called them - walked up on the platform, Yumaar looked as if he was about to collapse. His body was all sunken together, his eyes wandering frenetically about the room in desperate search for a place to to hide. It was kind of painful to see him standing there, looking like a shy animal that had been kidnapped from the wilderness to be put under public scrutiny within a cage that that was way to small. The holy man started with some sort of ceremonial gibberish, Jonas failed to extract any clear meaning from the words. The ending however, sounded oddly familiar:

"You may now kiss the bride"

The moment of doom... Jonas could not help smiling, a evil little grin that he could easily forgive himself, knowing that Yumaar was in no physical danger. The prince was cornered, he had no place to run. Amblenia leaned forward, her cracked lips forming a pout that yearned towards intimate contact with him. The camera zoomed in on them, the close up revealed several strands of thin hairs that stood up from Amblenia's upper lip.

"Oh my!"

Even though he was at safe distance, Jonas froze in terror. Would it really happen? It was too painful to watch, he shut his eyes as hard as he could. He did not dare to open them again before the sound of thundering applause reached his ears. Knowing that the worst part was over, Yumaar walked down the aisle with a more relaxed look on his face. D`Jumo thought he had seen enough and turned off the TV.

"So what do you think?" Jonas asked him.

"I think the next hours will be nerve-wracking. If Yumaar decide to stay and sort things out, I will be captain. If he goes with us, I will just be one out of many console-operators"

"We will just have to wait and see, don't we?"

"I will summon you to the bridge if he calls" D`Jumo assured him.

Jonas headed out of the bridge and climbed up to the room were the journeyman-explorer stood parked. Yumaar had built his ship dense and cramped, so there was barely enough space for it. A thick wall separated this room from the one containing the Ferengi-prisoners. This section of the ship was basically just a large container with mattresses and some furniture scattered around its mostly empty floor-space. The container didn't stretch all the way to the fuel-tanks at the back, its roof met the floor in a downwards slope half-way to the engine-section - it looked very smooth and organic when viewed from an exterior position. The K`hmynian team looked upon the Ferengies as a threat to ship-security, so the big door behind the Journeyman had been bolted shut. - Food and water was to be delivered through a slide carved into it. Jonas did not share their concern on this matter, the few and short dialogs he had had with the Ferengies had left him with the impression that they were non-violent business-people. Talking to them was actually very odd, like a blast from the past. On Earth, concepts like profit, stocks and private enterprises had been dumped in the trash-bin of history centuries ago. But the Ferengies? The Ferengies treated them as sacred relics that demanded worship. For some reason they had made a economic system - an economic system which was flimsy and unstable, and for that reason rarely found even on pre-warp planets - the foundation of their entire culture and identity. And now they went around space bargaining, haggling, buying, selling and cheating. To begin with Jonas had found them fun people to chat with, but after a while it just felt exhausting and empty.

The ladder from the first floor continued up the wall, all the way to to the ceiling. There was a hatch there, were one could walk up on the roof. It went almost without saying, that this hatch had to be locked very tight when out in space. It was hard work to turn and twist all the wheels and handles needed to open it, specially while balancing on a ladder. Truth to be told, Jonas had no idea why this hatch was even there. They already had an airlock on the first floor, so what did they need a extra hatch for? Whatever the reason, it felt good to climb back into bright daylight. The slight breeze was perfect, just enough to freshen up the hot air.

The dessert-floor stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. It was a carpet of dark and dirty yellow - completely barren, completely lifeless. It had been a year without rain, and also a year without sun. The sky was illuminated from above, but the sun itself could never be seen through the endless stream of clouds. It was no coincidence that the kings had chosen this specific spot as a hideout for their alien visitors. Nobody had any reason to be here, except the army that was. According to Yumaar this dessert had once been the testing-ground for the most destructive weapons their scientists were able to conjure up. This era of big explosions and mighty fireworks was abruptly ended when the Klingons destroyed the military-base. All that remained now was a huge crater at the left end of the runway. Compared to the military city that had once been, the barracks set up for the K`hmynian engineering-crew on the other side were small and mundane. Both the barracks and the Ferengi prison-complex next to it could fit a hundred times inside the mighty crater. Now that they finally were heading back into open space, Jonas asked himself if he was going to miss it. The answer was no - it had been too monotone, too few new faces and new challenges. The sunsets had been nice though, if Yumaar waited a few hours more to give his response, he might get to see one more.

Then Zin popped up from the hatch, carrying with him two cans of K`hmynian beer. He sat down beside Jonas and handed him one of them. It was sweet, just like everything else K`hmynian. Why did those idiots insist on drowning every single taste they made with sugar? Having asked this question, Jonas counted himself lucky for having synthesizers with human recipes on the Journeyman.

"I for one miss Bolian dishes, everything you Humans make is so annoyingly fresh and new" Zin argued when Jonas shared these thoughts with him.

"Ah, I have forgotten. You Bolians want everything you eat to be rotten and filled with worms, isn't that it?" Despite not enjoying it, Jonas took another sip of his beer.

While he struggled to get it down, he came to think back on the the day they first met back on Outpost 32. Right after introducing himself, Zin had tried to introduce him to Bolian cooking by handing him a cup of fatty icecream with dead worms in it.

"Actually, our scientists are surprised you Humans don't share our appetite for matured food. Your scientists claim early Humans were scavengers, just like us" Zin answered.

"But your wildlife is much bigger and stronger than ours, so it was much easier for us to kill our own food, once we invented spears and bows" Jonas pointed out.

"So you are saying the Human scavenger-period was to short to leave a genetic imprint"

"Precisely. And one also have to consider the amount of food left behind. If a Bolian dinarius-dront kills off a Bolian... whats the name again? Those big grazers with the flat beaks and eight legs?" Jonas asked.

"Pontosaur" Zin reminded him.

"Exactely! Pontosaur. When the dront have stuffed itself with Ponto-meat, and waddles away from the blood-soaked crime-scene, there will still be five-hundred kiloes or so of meat left"

"Keep in mind that the early Bolians would be chased away by the Chulu-bird"

"Well yeah, but those are pretty huge as well - and they are fiercely territorial. So when the single Chulu-bird in the area has left, there is still two-hundred kiloes of meat left. On Earth the leftovers are smaller, and the competing species of scavengers come in groups. Thus it was better for the early Humans to become hunters them selves"

"Point well made"

Meanwhile, the sun started to drop beyond the flat horizon. The sky turned dark orange, then blood-red. The vivid colors created a majestic, grand scenery that one never got completely accustomed to. Zin and Jonas had rounded off their biology-dispute just in time to fully enjoy it. Their foul-tasting beers were finished without further comments, then they walked back into the ship and closed the hatch.

D`Jumo was still sitting at his post in the bridge. Nothing had changed since their last encounter, there was still no sound from Yumaar.

"I'm getting tired of waiting" Jonas gruffed while dropping into one of the empty seats.

"Me too" D`Jumo agreed.

Then somebody called Jonas on his communicator. As he picked it up, he was surprised to see that it was not Yumaar. It was some Starfleet-officer, calling from Starbase 82

"Be right back" He mumbled while heading back into the corridor, away from the always curious ears of D`Jumo. When he let the caller through, a dry and bureaucrat-like voice introduced itself on the other end:

"This is lieutenant Corey calling on behalf of Admiral Sherling, chief of sector 82"

"Ensign Jonas McDonald here" Jonas replied.

"Good. I call to inform that you have a green light on your request to expand your mission. Your new objective is to bring the Ferengies safe to Ferenginar, and introduce yourself to the local authorities on behalf of Starfleet. Make sure they understand who we are, and try to learn as much about them while being there. Your secondary priority is to assist the K`hmynian mission"

"Excellent! Good day sir"

This was music to his ears, exactly what he had hoped for. He returned to the bridge with a huge grin on his face. Zin followed him with his eyes as he walked through the door, interpreting his expression correctly.

"Starfleet approved?" He wondered.

"Yes!" Jonas screamed in ecstasy while making a joyful little jump.

"And the journeyman? Can we keep it?" Zin asked.

"He didn't mention it, so I say we run away with it before they change their mind"

Having said this, Jonas walked up to the windshield up front. He leaned over the slanted front-board with a dreamy look on his face.

"To boldly goo..." He whispered while looking at the endless runway that stretched beyond the horizon.

"Where no K`hmynian or Starfleet employee have gone before" Zin added, finishing the sentence.

A new caller demanded their attention, but this time the beeping flowed from somewhere within the communications-board. Due to the old-school style of the ship, neither of the panels were equipped with the touch-sensitive screens Zin and Jonas were used to operate. It was all switchboards - huge buttons in all the colors of the rainbow. This low-tech appearance was done intentionally. Jonas had spotted touch-sensitive panels on everything from helicopter-cockpits to aircondition-systems during his stay, so it could not be beyond their capabilities to install them in starships as well.

D`Jumo got up and dumped back down into the seat adjunct to the beeping work-station.

"It better be Yumaar" He said while pushing the button that let the caller through.

It made a loud click when he squeezed it down - very charming. It was as if a hatch was opened manually to let the sound through.

"Are you good to go?" Yumaar's familiar voice asked them from within the box.

"Yes sir, the Ferengies have been moved into the new cell, the fuel-tanks are full, and the supplies are laden" D`Jumo reported proudly.

"Very well. You see, you guys are in a hurry" Yumaar said, suddenly sounding very serious.

"Care to elaborate?" D`Jumo requested.

"Private researchers have busted the whole alien-deal, and now a mob of journalists are heading your way in search of extraterrestrial life!"

"Wow, we stink at keeping secrets, don't we?" D`Jumo said with a wry smile on his lips.

He didn't seem to be take this whole hush-hush mess nearly as serious as Yumaar and his dad did.

"We sure do" Yumaar reluctantly agreed.

"Flee or fight?" D`Jumo asked.

"If you let the journalists assault you, the venture will be postponed indefinitely, and I want to keep the deal with the Ferengies. You must go now!" The prince ordered.

"Okay, good luck with everything. I will see you in a year or two"

"Good luck to you too"

Yumaar hung up on them, the button sprung back up with another loud click.

"That was dramatic" Jonas commented.

"The prince is in deep shit, things are not going his way" D`Jumo opined.

Then he leaned slowly back in his chair, scratching his chin in a thoughtful manner.

"I suggest we follow his instructions and leave in a hurry?" Zin urged them, scared by the idea of being trapped and surrounded by a gang of media-bullies on a truth-crusade.

"But where are the rest of the bridge officers?" Jonas wondered.

"Relax, I will call them" D`Jumo reassured them while squeezing a red button that sounded some sort of alarm.

The click of the button was immediately followed by an artificial howling which summoned the rest of the gang at impressively short notice. Zin and Jonas were ousted from their seats by the newcomers and refitted into the elevated observer-platforms at either side of the entrance. Here they would not be in anybodies way, while still having a good overview of the bridge and windshield. D`Jumo and Tux were the only ones from Yumaar`s trip to Nibulus 6 that had been singled out for this journey. Together they formed the Northern third of the bridge-crew, two out of six blueheads who were dressed in one-piece uniforms with yellow and black stripes. Jonas thought they resembled a bunch of bees, the combination of those idiotic uniforms and the antennas on their heads made them a somewhat awkward sight - the only thing missing to make their costumes complete were pairs of insect-wings sewed on to their backs. But this was the latest fashion on K`hmary, and he had to respect that.

D`Jumo had taken position by the captains-seat in the middle, but before he seated himself and buckled up, he wanted to say a few words to his crew:

"Ladies and gentlemen. We are leaving a bit early. Yumaar is not joining us. I expect every crewmember to do his very best. Today we write history."

The short and somewhat staccato speech was finished almost before it had begun. D`Jumo dropped into his seat, everybody fastened their seat-belts.

In order to save as much fuel as possible, the massive plane was pushed forward by electrified rails built into the runway. If Jonas had understood the system correctly, it was very similar to the way a rail-gun accelerated a bullet. The low and gentle humming from the electrical engine was completely out of sync with the rapid acceleration that pushed all of them hard into their seats, almost knocking the air out of their lungs in the process. The needle on the old-fashioned speedometer started rotating, climbing quickly towards the one-thousand kilometer mark at the high-point of the circular disc behind it. When it passed it and started its decent, the wings had all the lift they needed to get them airborne, but the ship was locked into the rails by the very same magnets who provided the brutal shove. They charged forward faster and faster, breaking the sound-barrier with a massive bang while still glued to the ground. The dessert that rushed past them seemed to transform itself, turning into a liquid stream of yellow and gray. Then the stream turned into a unreal looking tunnel that seemed completely separated from the room they sat in. Even the clouds moved swiftly past them, despite hanging a kilometer above the ground.

"These low-tech solutions are so much fun!" Zin whispered towards Jonas, half-fearing that the K`hmynians would be offended if the translator-plugs attached to their ears picked it up.

"I will treasure this moment" Jonas whispered in awe, his mouth half-open. His eyes stayed glued to the breathtaking scenery unfolding outside. They were heading straight into the still brilliantly vivid and colorful sunset, a most fitting beginning for what he hoped would be an epic adventure.

The end of the runway appeared on the horizon, leaping right at them. Jonas gasped in shock, overwhelmed by an instinctive fear of crashing head-first into the sand. The rails stopped a millisecond before the runway did, they broke free from the concrete-underlay with a powerful upward jerk that slammed them hard into their seats. For a split second Jonas felt as a falling rock, but this most terrible sensation ended when the hydrogen burner at the back came to his rescue - just as they had planned it. As it started its thundering roar, the snout of the ship turned skywards in a slow and steady movement that ended when they had reached an angle of about thirty degrees. The ship was too massive and heavy to shake, its trajectory was controlled and friction-free. The hydrogen-burner managed to maintain their speed through the thickest part of the atmosphere, they did not accelerate further before they had broken through the clouds. The blue sky thinned out, turning into a white haze that eventually dissolved into black space.

They had reached orbit.

The hydrogen tank and its auxiliary oxygen-chambers were at this point completely depleted, and the engine itself had turned into a potentially lethal red-glowing ball of metal that they better get rid of before the heat spread itself over to the main hull - turning it weak and molten. D`Jumo updated the others on his progress as he unbolted these spent parts and shot them out and away from the ship.

"You can let go of your safety-belts now" He then said.

The gravitational pull of K`hmary had lost its grasp on them, so the once they loosened their restraints, they floated out of their seats.

"From here it will be quite a lot of waiting around, in an hour or so we will dock with the orbital station that will replace our engine" Tux informed them.

The replacement itself would take several hours of hard work, a complex task in which Zin and Jonas had no role to play. Instead of hanging around, they decided to pass the time by taking a little runabout among the other planets in the system.

"So where to?" Zin wondered while Jonas pushed the Journeyman away from the mothership.

"I want to see the inner planets, we have still not checked them out"

"Good idea"

Jonas set the course without further discussion. Then he engaged the impulse engines and leaned back in his seat.

The Koroman Ladder shrunk rapidly away behind them, the gray world that had fostered it followed closely behind. Half way to the third planet in the system, the automated sensor-system made a series of surprising discoveries that made it widen its scan of the planet and its surroundings. In general it was considered a bad idea to rush into complex scenarios blindly, so Jonas slowed down to almost a full stop in order to let the scanner-array complete its work. The planet in question was framed in by a ring of asteroids, quite commonplace indeed. The same could not be said however, about the cloud of metal shrapnel that orbited its outer perimeter. And the planet itself was even weirder. - Iron... lots of it, to say the least. They had to get closer to find out exactly how deep the iron-crust went, but a lethal danger stood in their way: Two birds of prey rested within the cloud of shrapnel. Even in a weakened state, the Journeyman was no match for these killer-machines. Jonas feared that the scanner-signals could be traced back to him, so he shut down the array before it got started on a more thorough analysis. Instead of hurling more radio and sub-space frequencies at them, he tried to get as much as possible out of the the telescope-camera - a more subtle and stealthy approach. Going to maximum zoom, he could see that the metal shrapnel was made up from artificially crafted plates that were jagged, twisted and burnt by what must have been a series of violent explosions. Interesting, but when? - that was the next question in line. Thermo-imaging might give a clue, so he switched the camera into this mode. The resulting images did indeed make him wiser. Large parts of the field showed up white, but the asteroid-ring inside it was all orange. This meant that the debris-field held a temperature much higher than what the Nibulus-sun could delivers at this distance.

He was looking at a fresh battle-scene, no doubt about it. Going back to normal camera, Jonas then aimed in on the two enemy ships. One of the Klingon birds had a big and round cannon sticking out beneath the rear end. The long barrel ran all the way to the snout, it was fastened securely to the underside of the ship by a line of boxy suspenders. This most unusual add-on ruined the streamlined design completely. Jonas had never seen a Klingon ship with this type of weaponry, his instincts urged him to scan it - indulge his curiosity - but rational thinking screamed a loud no. There was too much at stake here, so instead of putting himself in mortal danger, he turned the ship around and retreated rapidly away from the third planet and its many mysteries.

"Our friends have returned" He commented when they were at safe distance.

"We live to explore another day" Zin said

"We must warn D`Jumo about this" Jonas concluded.

Their detour had in fact been most fortunate, cause the third planet had been the first place the K`hmynians had wanted to put under scrutiny. The primitive nuke-cannon that Yumaar had equipped his first ship with had been removed in favor of micro-version of the more advanced nadium-spiced laser that the southerners had used against the Klingon bombardment. This weapon was quite weak in the eyes of a starfleet officer like Jonas, who thought of it more as a multi-purpose tool. Due to its combination of precision and flexibility, it could be utilized for a huge variety of tasks. Fighting of Klingon Birds of Prey however, was not one of them.

Ten minutes later, Zin and Jonas were standing in front of the large, chess-like arrangement that functioned as star-chart on board Yumaar's ship. The many pieces on the table symbolized stars and important planets on nearby systems. The ship-icon was stuck in the exact center of the board, but the rest could be moved manually. Their positions were at all times to be based on numbers that were spit out by a narrow calculator-screen built into the wall, - but why so primitive? The answer was to be found within their electricity-grid. The fusion-planet was dedicated exclusively to the warp-drive, and since the rest of the ship was driven by a solar-panel that was folded out like a sail on top of the ship, the number of electricity-draining applications had been reduced to an absolute minimum. The rational reason was a need to preserve energy in order to not deplete their primitive batteries and freeze to death while traversing the darkness of deep space, but Jonas didn't buy this explanation. His theory was that Yumaar, the space-agencies - whoever was responsible - believed that manual labor was important for the moral of the crew. The batteries could definitely have been made bigger or better, and absolutely everything on board was done manually. The heavy doors had to be open and closed by hand, and none of the floors or walls had auto-cleaning nano-bots built into them. Every single one of the pear-shaped light-bulbs that stuck out from strategic places along the ceiling was connected to a switch that had turned on and off manually. There was no sensor-detection anywhere, not even on the heaters. The crew had to adjust the radiators... Manually. Cooking? - Manually. Washing clothes? Manually.

Everything... happened... Manually.

Jonas expected to go insane from all the switches and wheels he had to turn to get through the day, but at least the K`hmynians would score originality-points within the intergalactic community. The captain of every ship they met on their way to Ferenginar would rub his eyes and scratch his forehead, questioning the validity of the incredible schematics delivered by his scanner-array. Their minimalistic electricity-grid - or lack of it, to be more precise - could be described with such words as "exotic" "curious" and "interesting", and the same could actually be said about the stuff going on at their manual star-chart. The seven closest stars to Nibulus formed a circle around it, but according to plan they would only explore one of them before heading deeper into the Milkyway, where the Ferengies claimed their homeworld was located. The K`hmynian scientists had found what they called a "K`hmary-like" planet here - meaning that it was temperated, had a thick atmosphere, and normal gravity. Unfortunate as it was, the Klingons were blocking their way. Following Zin's warning, the two enemy ships had been set up as red circles on the manual star-chart. Two pieces of magnetic cardboard shaped as rockets had been placed within each O, that way marking the danger-zones as the result of alien activity.

"We can not go straight on, and to circle around them will drain too much of fuel" D`Jumo thought out loud.

"What about Cube Starbase?" Jonas suggested.

Yumaar had been so eager to go there he literary jumped through the roof when they had first discovered it on the Federation star-chart Zin had borrowed him. D`Jumo had been informed about it later, when they went through all the possible stops on their trip. Jonas could not remember whether or not he had voiced any opinion on it, but was this not an excellent excuse for a detour?

"You can say hello to your closest neighbors in space, and probably buy some more hydrogen" Zin elaborated.

"Excellent idea! onwards to Cube Starbase!" D`Jumo agreed without any hesitation.

The whole crew followed his lead as he strode towards the bridge with unwavering resolution.

"To boldly go!" Jonas screamed joyfully.

"Where no starshirt or K`hmynian have gone before!" Zin tallied in with equal enthusiasm.

The adventure continued.


End file.
